What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
Al Dykes
I know that Compaq picked them up and was for a while the holder of
the two jewels of high-availability computing; VMS and NonStop.
What's happend to the Tandem community and what is the status of
NonStop and the Tandem relational database product?
FWIW, I just saw that HP (which probably owns the rights to Tandem IP)
has just announced that it's new flagship nonstop platform is
Linux-based.
--
a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m
Don't blame me. I voted for Gore.
Jack Peacock
news:dcu042$ltr$1...@panix5.panix.com...
>
> I know that Compaq picked them up and was for a while the holder of
> the two jewels of high-availability computing; VMS and NonStop.
>
> What's happend to the Tandem community and what is the status of
> NonStop and the Tandem relational database product?
>
VMS and NSK are effectively on a "milk the cash cow" support level, a
precursor to their ascendency into the Great Beyond of deceased operating
systems. Neither OS gets any marketing support. Call HP and ask about NSK
or VMS, you get a pitch on running Windows 2003. Tru64, the Unix variant
for Alphas, has already been discontinued.
HP is in the process of dismantling all of their non x86 markets. Old time
DEC types from the 10/20 large computer group days will recognize a familiar
pattern, lots of talk about commitment and continued support, steady
technical budget cuts, and little new development. The latest HP layoffs
are rumored to be targeting the VMS engineering group, with talk of moving
VMS support to India (makes sense, after all, only a handful use Itanium
servers running VMS). I expect NSK would follow soon after.
I wouldn't expect either VMS or NSK to survive much past 2007. As it
happens, found out today I will likely be ending all VMS support for our
customers by next month. Kinda sad, after a 24 year run dating from the
days of VMS 3.
Jack Peacock
jmfb...@aol.com
"Jack Peacock" <pea...@simconv.com> wrote:
>"Al Dykes" <ady...@panix.com> wrote in message
>news:dcu042$ltr$1...@panix5.panix.com...
>>
>> I know that Compaq picked them up and was for a while the holder of
>> the two jewels of high-availability computing; VMS and NonStop.
>>
>> What's happend to the Tandem community and what is the status of
>> NonStop and the Tandem relational database product?
>>
>HP has moved VMS to the Itanium, but the NSK project was cancelled. Both
>VMS and NSK are effectively on a "milk the cash cow" support level, a
>precursor to their ascendency into the Great Beyond of deceased operating
>systems. Neither OS gets any marketing support. Call HP and ask about
NSK
>or VMS, you get a pitch on running Windows 2003. Tru64, the Unix variant
>for Alphas, has already been discontinued.
>
>HP is in the process of dismantling all of their non x86 markets. Old
time
>DEC types from the 10/20 large computer group days will recognize a
familiar
>pattern, lots of talk about commitment and continued support, steady
>technical budget cuts, and little new development.
I tried to warn you last year.
> .. The latest HP layoffs
>are rumored to be targeting the VMS engineering group, with talk of moving
>VMS support to India (makes sense, after all, only a handful use Itanium
>servers running VMS). I expect NSK would follow soon after.
Rumors have it that their Unix is already gone over. Don't expect
any OS development.
>
>I wouldn't expect either VMS or NSK to survive much past 2007. As it
>happens, found out today I will likely be ending all VMS support for our
>customers by next month. Kinda sad, after a 24 year run dating from the
>days of VMS 3.
I would like to kick the notion that an "old" OS should be retired.
An "old" OS is just starting to get good at what it does.
Getting the infrastructure in place takes years. Getting that
infrastructure to work efficiently takes decades. In less than
a few years, all of the knowledge that knew how to get this
work done, was eliminated.
/BAH
Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
Andrew Swallow
Compared to Windows 2010 good old VMS is a new operating system.
Although a WYSISWYG text editor with built-in spelling checker would be
nice.
Andrew Swallow
jmfb...@aol.com
2010? WTF is that?
> ... good old VMS is a new operating system.
No. The post-Cutler VMS is a new OS.
> ..
>Although a WYSISWYG text editor with built-in spelling checker would be
>nice.
So you want to start a religion war? I'll tell you why you
never get a WYSISWYG editor. Nobody in DEC ever agreed what
WYSIWYG was, let alone a WYSI(Sorta)WYG.
Andrew Swallow
Joachim Pense
>
> I know that Compaq picked them up and was for a while the holder of
> the two jewels of high-availability computing; VMS and NonStop.
>
> What's happend to the Tandem community and what is the status of
> NonStop and the Tandem relational database product?
>
Ah Tandem..., those were the days when I spent my time writing Non-Stop-SQL
applications in TACL. I switched to a Unix-based job in 1999; Sure Tandem
is nothing compared to Unix when it comes to useful command line tools. But
when I see the "HA-Clusters" that are commonly used today, that looks a bit
stone-age-like compared to what Tandem had to offer. And Non-Stop-SQL: Talk
about query execution plans that help you getting your job done! I broke
out in tears when I saw the ones that come from Oracle.
Only the fact that ALT-F4 was the "undo" command in TEDIT did not work well
for me - once your terminal emulator focus was not right, you lost the
session and the crap you wanted to undo was permanently saved.
Joachim
Eric Sosman
Andrew Swallow wrote:
>
> Compared to Windows 2010 good old VMS is a new operating system.
> Although a WYSISWYG text editor with built-in spelling checker would be
> nice.
(Plug for a PPOE): Interleaf 5. Unfortunately, the
Interleaf 6 version was a big step backwards, so the
company and its products have preceded (Open)VMS into the
Great Beyond ...
Eric Chomko
: "Al Dykes" <ady...@panix.com> wrote in message
Well I won't be removing DCL off my resume just the same.
Eric
: Jack Peacock
Eric Chomko
: In article <naidndhPWp6...@mpowercom.net>,
The problem was DEC. They insisted that microprocessors were toys only to
bet the whole farm on Alpha when it was too late. The Alpha was supposed
to run any of three different OSs: VMS, WinNT and Unix (OSF). The
problem there is that they ended up with subpar versions of all three.
Eric
: /BAH
Elliott Roper
<echom...@polaris.umuc.edu> wrote:
<snip>
> The problem was DEC. They insisted that microprocessors were toys only to
> bet the whole farm on Alpha when it was too late. The Alpha was supposed
> to run any of three different OSs: VMS, WinNT and Unix (OSF). The
> problem there is that they ended up with subpar versions of all three.
I'll give you two out of three. There is nothing sub-par about VMS on
Alpha.
Then you have to provide an operational test for the other two, to
distinguish sub-par from normal operation....
<GD&R>
Actually, today is a sad day. I have switched off the last of my VMS
cluster, replacing the whole thing with a Mac mini. I will have to be
nice to schmunix from now on....
--
To de-mung my e-mail address:- fsnospam$elliott$$
PGP Fingerprint: 1A96 3CF7 637F 896B C810 E199 7E5C A9E4 8E59 E248
Rupert Pigott
> The problem was DEC. They insisted that microprocessors were toys only to
> bet the whole farm on Alpha when it was too late. The Alpha was supposed
> to run any of three different OSs: VMS, WinNT and Unix (OSF). The
> problem there is that they ended up with subpar versions of all three.
I was pretty happy with Digital UNIX to be honest. I can't
recall it getting in the way of me getting work done. :)
Cheers,
Rupert
Peter Flass
>
> The problem was DEC. They insisted that microprocessors were toys only to
> bet the whole farm on Alpha when it was too late. The Alpha was supposed
> to run any of three different OSs: VMS, WinNT and Unix (OSF). The
> problem there is that they ended up with subpar versions of all three.
>
A subpar version of winblows, not *that* must really be something to see;-)
Eugene Miya
>I know that Compaq picked them up and was for a while the holder of
>the two jewels of high-availability computing; VMS and NonStop.
>
>What's happend to the Tandem community and what is the status of
>NonStop and the Tandem relational database product?
They still exist (Tandem).
There is tandem newsgroup.
I know a couple of people who work on them or have previously worked on them.
I just pointed to the Museum to one machine being decommissioned.
I also talk to the HP archivist as well about all things acquired by H-P.
--
jmfb...@aol.com
This was the attitude of most Digital customers. Thus,
it had to be "fixed" since it is a sin to envoke customer
satisfaction.
Eric does not know what he's talking about.
jmfb...@aol.com
jmfb...@aol.com
I think we know that.
> ..They insisted that microprocessors were toys
You have no idea what you are talking about.
> .. only to
>bet the whole farm on Alpha when it was too late.
The Alpha was extremely successful; customers liked them.
Customers' users liked to use them. The Alpha was a next
CPU architecture. DEC was knew how to do this business.
> ..The Alpha was supposed
>to run any of three different OSs: VMS, WinNT and Unix (OSF). The
>problem there is that they ended up with subpar versions of all three.
You abosolute have no idea what you're talking about. Two of
those were Digital products and were gladly used by
lots of people who did serious computing (science and engineers).
The other flavor was established as a hook into DEC's business
with the intent of pulling the rug out by withdrawing funding
at the most strategic time. Now why Billyboy thought that
undermining the Alpha in favor of Intel was good idea is still
a mystery of my life. One would think that a sane person would
try to have his product work on two manufacturers' machines
just in case one decided to do something stupid.
Al Dykes
>In article <dd0ip8$10dn$5...@news.ums.edu>,
> echom...@polaris.umuc.edu (Eric Chomko) wrote:
>>jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
>>: In article <naidndhPWp6...@mpowercom.net>,
>>: "Jack Peacock" <pea...@simconv.com> wrote:
>>: >"Al Dykes" <ady...@panix.com> wrote in message
>>: >news:dcu042$ltr$1...@panix5.panix.com...
>>: >>
>>: >> I know that Compaq picked them up and was for a while the holder of
>>: >> the two jewels of high-availability computing; VMS and NonStop.
[lots of old text deleted]
Wasn't there a rumor at the time that Bill was going to buy DEC with
the spare change he found under his couch?
jmfb...@aol.com
ady...@panix.com (Al Dykes) wrote:
>In article <rLudnfxNd8t...@rcn.net>, <jmfb...@aol.com> wrote:
>>In article <dd0ip8$10dn$5...@news.ums.edu>,
>> echom...@polaris.umuc.edu (Eric Chomko) wrote:
>>>jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
>>>: In article <naidndhPWp6...@mpowercom.net>,
>>>: "Jack Peacock" <pea...@simconv.com> wrote:
>>>: >"Al Dykes" <ady...@panix.com> wrote in message
>>>: >news:dcu042$ltr$1...@panix5.panix.com...
>>>: >>
>>>: >> I know that Compaq picked them up and was for a while the holder of
>>>: >> the two jewels of high-availability computing; VMS and NonStop.
>
> [lots of old text deleted]
Thanks. I didn't know what to snip.
No. It was Compaq who was doing the buying and the BoD was
stripping off everything but the help desk infrastructure
and bleeding the cash out. Another mystery of my life is
why Compaq got what it bought and then proceded to dismantle
it.
Steve O'Hara-Smith
jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
> In article <TDRIe.2158$rI6...@twister.nyroc.rr.com>,
> >A subpar version of winblows, not *that* must really be something to
> see;-)
> >
> Fixed in the next release.
s/next/previous/
--
C:>WIN | Directable Mirror Arrays
The computer obeys and wins. | A better way to focus the sun
You lose and Bill collects. | licences available see
| http://www.sohara.org/
jmfb...@aol.com
Steve O'Hara-Smith <ste...@eircom.net> wrote:
>On Sat, 06 Aug 05 09:13:22 GMT
>jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
>
>> In article <TDRIe.2158$rI6...@twister.nyroc.rr.com>,
>
>> >A subpar version of winblows, not *that* must really be something to
>> see;-)
>> >
>> Fixed in the next release.
>
> s/next/previous/
You question my spec!!!!? ;-) Each release is worse than
the previous, by design. I stand by my next.
jmfb...@aol.com
for...@dev.nul (Colonel Forbin) wrote:
>In article <GemdnZ2dnZ12tsiqnZ2dn...@rcn.net>,
>economy is going.
So much bullshit to clean up; I have no idea where to start.
Compaq did the dismantling during a boom time. It is another
example of a distribution business not understanding the OS
biz. The key to a successful customer support, as least w.r.t.
DEC, was the underlying infrastructure of the OS development
groups. Yea, they're all a PITA to manage and keep busy but
its 1/2 of the seed corn. The other half is the customers
giving feedback.
>
>They want to recreate the plantation system where most Americans
>are cheap manual labor and the capitalist class day trade in the
>human labor market.
That is what you Democrats wish to turn the economy into.
>
>We used to call that slavery, but that's not a Politically Correct
>term today, so we call it a service oriented economy.
Nope. It's called a Welfare state which rewards non-productivity.
>
>The already wealthy capitalist investor class don't want to share
>their profit with American workers, they want to keep it all.
This is complete utter Democrat Party weasel words. American
workers also own companies in the form of stock, either directly
or indirectly.
>
>The problem is that the architects of this plan are being undercut
>by international capitalists who aren't bound by their rules.
Which rules are those? They happen to be the ones that dictate
all employers (you know those rich people you are blaming)
provide these benefits that are now being called rights.
rpl
> Eric Chomko wrote:
> The Alpha was extremely successful; customers liked them.
> Customers' users liked to use them. The Alpha was a next
> CPU architecture. DEC was knew how to do this business.
>
>
>>..The Alpha was supposed
>>to run any of three different OSs: VMS, WinNT and Unix (OSF). The
>>problem there is that they ended up with subpar versions of all three.
>
>
> You abosolute have no idea what you're talking about. Two of
> those were Digital products and were gladly used by
> lots of people who did serious computing (science and engineers).
> The other flavor was established as a hook into DEC's business
> with the intent of pulling the rug out by withdrawing funding
> at the most strategic time. Now why Billyboy thought that
> undermining the Alpha in favor of Intel was good idea is still
> a mystery of my life. One would think that a sane person would
> try to have his product work on two manufacturers' machines
> just in case one decided to do something stupid.
M$ stuff already runs on 2 architectures (Word for Mac f'rinstance) and
several processors (Intel & AMD being the main ones).
Impression I got was that the undermining was somewhat unintentional.
DEC had nothing to compete with M$ software-wise in the GUI based
microcomputer market and vice-versa. x86 uprocs weren't even close to
the Alpha league so a working Alpha/NT solution could be easily dropped
into an M$' customer who needed more powerful machines, and then DEC
wouldn't have to worry about downwards compatibility for their customers
who were starting to put PC's on desktops.
But now the problem: NT running on Alpha is a direct competitor of
VMS/Pathworks(/All-in-One) and is a lower-initial-cost solution.
Sorta like the PDP/VAX thing you're always going on about <grin> but
worse; now part of the solutionset, control and profits are out-of-house.
What I really don't understand is why HP apparently hasn't been able to
do anything with VMS/DECUnix/Alpha (though I see CF getting fired and
the advent of the Mac-Mini as being significant for some reason).
rpl
Charlie Gibbs
(jmfbahciv) writes:
I think you two are in violent agreement, modulo some wording problems.
Either that, or you're talking about two different things: Steve about
the ongoing degradation of each "upgrade", and Barb about the "Real
Soon Now" phenomenon.
As for myself, I just love to pull out that old saying:
"It's a great improvement on its successors."
--
/~\ cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855.
/ \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!
Peter Flass
[snippage, including attributions]
> So much bullshit to clean up; I have no idea where to start.
> Compaq did the dismantling during a boom time. It is another
> example of a distribution business not understanding the OS
> biz. The key to a successful customer support, as least w.r.t.
> DEC, was the underlying infrastructure of the OS development
> groups. Yea, they're all a PITA to manage and keep busy but
> its 1/2 of the seed corn. The other half is the customers
> giving feedback.
>
I think it's a result of the mi$fot monopoly. Compaq, like IBM,
couldn't afford to have a PC OS that competed with winblows. They would
have gotten screwed on terms, pricing, access to API specs, or
something. Since their main business was selling consumer PC's, they
couldn't afford to p*ss off M$, and the dollars weren't there to justify it.
Rupert Pigott
> I seem to recall that's what Steve Bourne said about V7 Unix.
I can understand that sentiment, I had the same feeling about
Linux 1.2.13. However V7 doesn't have pf or run Blender so it
would be about as much use as a chocolate teapot to me right
now. :)
There are some embedded jobs I'm working on that would suit
something along the lines of V7 though.
Cheers,
Rupert
jmfb...@aol.com
"Charlie Gibbs" <cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>In article <npadnWDw15s...@rcn.net>, jmfb...@aol.com
>(jmfbahciv) writes:
>
>> In article <20050807070108....@eircom.net>,
>> Steve O'Hara-Smith <ste...@eircom.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sat, 06 Aug 05 09:13:22 GMT
>>> jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
>>>
>>>> In article <TDRIe.2158$rI6...@twister.nyroc.rr.com>,
>>>
>>>>> A subpar version of winblows, not *that* must really be something
>>>>> to see;-)
>>>>
>>>> Fixed in the next release.
>>>
>>> s/next/previous/
>>
>> You question my spec!!!!? ;-) Each release is worse than
>> the previous, by design. I stand by my next.
>
>I think you two are in violent agreement, modulo some wording problems.
Of course we are.
>Either that, or you're talking about two different things: Steve about
>the ongoing degradation of each "upgrade", and Barb about the "Real
>Soon Now" phenomenon.
Reread the comment with my reply; I meant to subtely point out
that, if anything worked well in Version n, it would be fixed
to not work well in Version n+1.
>
>As for myself, I just love to pull out that old saying:
>"It's a great improvement on its successors."
This is such a foreign thought to me. With the exception
of the last development group, this never occured to
any developer. We were always planning and working on
the next three releases. Some thing required shipping
preliminary code so that the new feature could be implemented
without impacting the customers.
jmfb...@aol.com
Peter Flass <Peter...@Yahoo.com> wrote:
>jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
>
>[snippage, including attributions]
>
>> So much bullshit to clean up; I have no idea where to start.
>> Compaq did the dismantling during a boom time. It is another
>> example of a distribution business not understanding the OS
>> biz. The key to a successful customer support, as least w.r.t.
>> DEC, was the underlying infrastructure of the OS development
>> groups. Yea, they're all a PITA to manage and keep busy but
>> its 1/2 of the seed corn. The other half is the customers
>> giving feedback.
>>
>
>I think it's a result of the mi$fot monopoly. Compaq, like IBM,
>couldn't afford to have a PC OS that competed with winblows.
This is nuts. NT was already in the works. JMF was working
on the first something-or-other of NT a year before he died
(1995). MS was _funding_ NT on the Alpha. From what I hear,
Palmer had had two groups working on it. Thus, since Tech
Support was already ramped up for Microsoft products, it
would have been in Compaq's best interests to maintain the
infrastructure (that is people plus all the paperwork that
keeps them employed and supplied). The way the Tech groups
keep up-to-date is to continue the synergy from development
and maintenance and back again. It's very difficult to
describe. I can imagine that it might be impossible for
suits in the boardroom to be aware this stuff exists.
> .. They would
>have gotten screwed on terms, pricing, access to API specs, or
>something. Since their main business was selling consumer PC's, they
>couldn't afford to p*ss off M$, and the dollars weren't there to justify
it.
But I saw no indication that they were pissing off MS. Your
speculation makes no sense. Why would Compaq even initiate
a deal if it would piss off MS? They wouldn't.
/BAH
jmfb...@aol.com
rpl <plinnan...@NOSPAMyahoo.com> wrote:
>jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
>> Eric Chomko wrote:
>
>> The Alpha was extremely successful; customers liked them.
>> Customers' users liked to use them. The Alpha was a next
>> CPU architecture. DEC was knew how to do this business.
>>
>>
>>>..The Alpha was supposed
>>>to run any of three different OSs: VMS, WinNT and Unix (OSF). The
>>>problem there is that they ended up with subpar versions of all three.
>>
>>
>> You abosolute have no idea what you're talking about. Two of
>> those were Digital products and were gladly used by
>> lots of people who did serious computing (science and engineers).
>> The other flavor was established as a hook into DEC's business
>> with the intent of pulling the rug out by withdrawing funding
>> at the most strategic time. Now why Billyboy thought that
>> undermining the Alpha in favor of Intel was good idea is still
>> a mystery of my life. One would think that a sane person would
>> try to have his product work on two manufacturers' machines
>> just in case one decided to do something stupid.
>
>M$ stuff already runs on 2 architectures (Word for Mac f'rinstance) and
>several processors (Intel & AMD being the main ones).
And Alpha. MS funded the software development on the Alpha.
NT was going to replace DOS. Why be picky w.r.t. CPU
architecture?
>
>Impression I got was that the undermining was somewhat unintentional.
>DEC had nothing to compete with M$ software-wise in the GUI based
>microcomputer market and vice-versa. x86 uprocs weren't even close to
>the Alpha league so a working Alpha/NT solution could be easily dropped
>into an M$' customer who needed more powerful machines, and then DEC
>wouldn't have to worry about downwards compatibility for their customers
>who were starting to put PC's on desktops.
>
>But now the problem: NT running on Alpha is a direct competitor of
>VMS/Pathworks(/All-in-One) and is a lower-initial-cost solution.
Sigh! VMS was already dead.
>
>Sorta like the PDP/VAX thing you're always going on about <grin> but
>worse; now part of the solutionset, control and profits are out-of-house.
No they weren't. There wasn't any profiting to consider; DEC
was going to get sold to Compaq as soon as the profitable
hard/software had been sold and everything else stripped down
to the Tech Support center.
>
>What I really don't understand is why HP apparently hasn't been able to
>do anything with VMS/DECUnix/Alpha
Sigh! Because Carlybaby did everything she could to
regress the biz back to the ink biz. Any corporate
knowledge that dealt with non-expendable items seems
to have been scrubbed out of their woodwork. The OS
biz is not a business that deals with expendables.
It is a product that is tuned and has replacement
parts and slowly changes over time depending on how
it is used. Each copy of an OS is unique and not
like any other because the usage conforms the soft/hardware.
It something like shoes. The company starts out shipping
identical pairs. But, over time, each pair becomes unique.
When this company fixes the shoes, each pair remains
unique and conformed to the single customer.
I get so frustrated with myself because I cannot seem
to explain this well.
/BAH
> ..(though I see CF getting fired and
>the advent of the Mac-Mini as being significant for some reason).
>
>
>rpl
Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
jmfb...@aol.com
for...@dev.nul (Colonel Forbin) wrote:
>In article <89idnZ9dxIg...@rcn.net>, <jmfb...@aol.com> wrote:
>>In article <uynJe.65378$yC5....@tornado.ohiordc.rr.com>,
>> for...@dev.nul (Colonel Forbin) wrote:
>>>
>>>It's not much of a mystery if you look at where the American
>>>economy is going.
>>
>>So much bullshit to clean up; I have no idea where to start.
>>Compaq did the dismantling during a boom time. It is another
>>example of a distribution business not understanding the OS
>>biz. The key to a successful customer support, as least w.r.t.
>>DEC, was the underlying infrastructure of the OS development
>>groups. Yea, they're all a PITA to manage and keep busy but
>>its 1/2 of the seed corn. The other half is the customers
>>giving feedback.
>
>it was when you worked there to society at large,
No, I don't. I understand very well how the exposure
kiddies got to DEC computing in the 60s and 70s lead to
this PC generation. The first task was to eliminate the
fear of using computing gear and this includes exposure
to language concepts that weren't spoken and were reduced
to binary. (Hex is a form of binary.) The second step
was to give kiddies (and scientists were grownup kiddies)
the taste and feel of having a computer system all to
themselves and learn how much computing wallclock work
they could hand off to the system while they did real
thinking work.
There is no way this could have been done with card-based
systems. Since IBM was losing sales to DEC for precisely
the above lacks, IBM got real busy with computing and
eliminating sneaker aspects of computing.
> .. and in my view
>a rather naive view of the overall motives of top management there
>even before the VAX came along. Indeed, the VAX era wasn't the
>first time 36-bit systems were killed at DEC, but that was before
>your time.
Oh? What time was that?
>
>>>They want to recreate the plantation system where most Americans
>>>are cheap manual labor and the capitalist class day trade in the
>>>human labor market.
>>
>>That is what you Democrats wish to turn the economy into.
>
>I am not a Democrat.
Then you had better wake up because you are talking like one.
>
>>>We used to call that slavery, but that's not a Politically Correct
>>>term today, so we call it a service oriented economy.
>>
>>Nope. It's called a Welfare state which rewards non-productivity.
>
>You seem to have a fixation with welfare, which is a bit odd coming
>from someone with a serious medical disability.
You consider insurance, that I bought, welfare?
>
>Look at Dubya. He owns a freaking plantation in Crawford.
I have at least a dozen relatives who also own farms and land.
This is a sin and must be irradicated?
>
>[much hand waving] "It's very simple, see? You work at WalMart for
>minimum wage and no benefits with forced unpaid overtime
More bullshit. If you're at minimum wage, you're getting paid
hourly. You get paid for all hours you work.
> .. after you're
>retrained from your former job as a OS developer, and I get rich.
>Next question."
Nice quote. Too bad you had to lie. If Bush had said
that, it would have been all over the news.
>
>>>The already wealthy capitalist investor class don't want to share
>>>their profit with American workers, they want to keep it all.
>>
>>This is complete utter Democrat Party weasel words. American
>>workers also own companies in the form of stock, either directly
>>or indirectly.
>
>Yeah, tell that to the "owner/investors" at Enron.
Enron was created by Congress when they fined-tuned the
govenment regulations of the electric power industry.
People who invested in Enron at that time were doing
it for getting rich quick. This is not capitalism.
It is an example of what happens when socialism dictated
by Congress enters the business world. When you have energy
brokers cheering a broad destruction of forests in the West
because it will cause the price of energy futures to rise,
the company is no longer in production but a get-rich-quick
scheme.
>
>>>The problem is that the architects of this plan are being undercut
>>>by international capitalists who aren't bound by their rules.
>>
>>Which rules are those? They happen to be the ones that dictate
>>all employers (you know those rich people you are blaming)
>>provide these benefits that are now being called rights.
>
>Those are the rules of people who have figured out that they can
>screw America out of everything we worked to create and build by
>simply relocating their headquarters out of reach of our laws.
why are they forced to move? Examine that and you'll trace it
back to Liberals changing benefits (which were used to attract
people) into rights. And Liberals insisting that all employees
be paid whether they do the work or not. And Unions who insist
that their minimum wage be so high that net profits are impossible.
Oh, yes, and building manufacturing facilities won't cost money
and time dealing with law suits whose sole purpose is to delay
that production.
>
>The Dempublicans and the Republicrats are the same, and they're
>sucking the life out of the American economy by using it as a
>giant credit card.
Nope. Only the ones getting voted in are doing that. Since
the people who are mewling about the rich are the ones who
vote those suckers in, it is ultimately their responsibility
and their mess to clean up.
rpl
> In article <UsSdncp9FNF...@rogers.com>,
> rpl <plinnan...@NOSPAMyahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
>>
>>>One would think that a sane person would
>>>try to have his product work on two manufacturers' machines
>>>just in case one decided to do something stupid.
>>
>>M$ stuff already runs on 2 architectures (Word for Mac f'rinstance) and
>>several processors (Intel & AMD being the main ones).
>
>
> And Alpha. MS funded the software development on the Alpha.
> NT was going to replace DOS. Why be picky w.r.t. CPU
> architecture?
ummm... you're the one mentioned "One would think that..."
>
>>Impression I got was that the undermining was somewhat unintentional.
>>DEC had nothing to compete with M$ software-wise in the GUI based
>>microcomputer market and vice-versa. x86 uprocs weren't even close to
>>the Alpha league so a working Alpha/NT solution could be easily dropped
>>into an M$' customer who needed more powerful machines, and then DEC
>>wouldn't have to worry about downwards compatibility for their customers
>>who were starting to put PC's on desktops.
>>
>>But now the problem: NT running on Alpha is a direct competitor of
>>VMS/Pathworks(/All-in-One) and is a lower-initial-cost solution.
>
>
> Sigh! VMS was already dead.
hmmm I seemed to have timewarped a bit; I was talking about early 90's
>
>>Sorta like the PDP/VAX thing you're always going on about <grin> but
>>worse; now part of the solutionset, control and profits are out-of-house.
>
> No they weren't. There wasn't any profiting to consider; DEC
> was going to get sold to Compaq as soon as the profitable
> hard/software had been sold and everything else stripped down
> to the Tech Support center.
>
>>What I really don't understand is why HP apparently hasn't been able to
>>do anything with VMS/DECUnix/Alpha
>
>
> Sigh! Because Carlybaby did everything she could to
> regress the biz back to the ink biz. Any corporate
> knowledge that dealt with non-expendable items seems
> to have been scrubbed out of their woodwork. The OS
> biz is not a business that deals with expendables.
> It is a product that is tuned and has replacement
> parts and slowly changes over time depending on how
> it is used. Each copy of an OS is unique and not
> like any other because the usage conforms the soft/hardware.
>
> It something like shoes. The company starts out shipping
> identical pairs. But, over time, each pair becomes unique.
> When this company fixes the shoes, each pair remains
> unique and conformed to the single customer.
very expensive shoes in the short run. when you have billions of
customers it's more cash-worthy to bloat up the marketing and other
obfuscation departments to obscene levels and redefine "shoes" to mean
whatever crap you happen to be shipping that particular day. Very "tail
wagging the dog" looking to anybody who actually needs to walk on things
not particularly made for barefoot traverse.
rpl
Kelli Halliburton
> I'm not sure this is true. IBM royally screwed up by letting Microsoft
> have the IP rights. This sort of goes along with the overall attitude in
> IBM that PCs weren't a vital business market. Evidently it had never
> occurred to anybody at IBM that Microsoft might simply stab them in the
> back once they had enough development capital to produce a marketable OS.
And yet they didn't manage to work out something better with OS/2, and
allowed MS to go off and build NT.
Those who do not learn from the mistakes of history are condemned to
repeat them.
Peter Flass
When was the plug pulled on NT/Alpha? At one point there were several
ports of NT, including Alpha and PPC. I'm not sure any are left. My
thought, based on knowing none of the facts, is that M$ somehow left the
other groups swinging after the initial port.
I'm really not sure why Compaq wanted DEC, except maybe for the
manufacturing capability. It seems like as soon as the deal was
completed they dismantled whatever was left after Palmer finished. I
had thought they wanted to bolster their cred as an enterprise provider
with Alpha, VMS, and Unix, but those seem to have been the pieces they
got rid of first.
doo...@snowy.net.au
> When was the plug pulled on NT/Alpha? At one point there were several
> ports of NT, including Alpha and PPC. I'm not sure any are left. My
> thought, based on knowing none of the facts, is that M$ somehow left the
> other groups swinging after the initial port.
architecture, as everyone in comp.arch was saying how bad that was
and couldn't possibly progress much further, while the alpha and ppc
supporters argued about which was better.
There was even a version of NT for mips which Tandem were going
to market, but I don't know what happened to that one.
The ppc version was discontinued first (around NT4 timeframe?)
and the alpha at about the time w2k came out, though there were
beta versions released. Apparently MS carried on using alphas
for testing for a while after, just to make sure the os was portable.
Also I have read that the ppc version of NT was the starting point
for the development of the new xbox360
Phil
Steve O'Hara-Smith
"Charlie Gibbs" <cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
> In article <npadnWDw15s...@rcn.net>, jmfb...@aol.com
> (jmfbahciv) writes:
>
> > In article <20050807070108....@eircom.net>,
> > Steve O'Hara-Smith <ste...@eircom.net> wrote:
> >
> >> On Sat, 06 Aug 05 09:13:22 GMT
> >> jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
> >>
> >>> In article <TDRIe.2158$rI6...@twister.nyroc.rr.com>,
> >>
> >>>> A subpar version of winblows, not *that* must really be something
> >>>> to see;-)
> >>>
> >>> Fixed in the next release.
> >>
> >> s/next/previous/
> >
> > You question my spec!!!!? ;-) Each release is worse than
> > the previous, by design. I stand by my next.
>
> I think you two are in violent agreement, modulo some wording problems.
In just about everything apart from politics - yes.
Peter Ibbotson
news:p2aKe.5979$rI6....@twister.nyroc.rr.com...
> When was the plug pulled on NT/Alpha? At one point there were several
During the W2K beta program, I seem to remember summer 1999, somewhere
around here I still have the beta discs. (FX rummages under desk) Ah it got
as far as Beta 3 mine have dates of 7-May-99 on the file system.
--
Work pet...@lakeview.co.uk.plugh.org | remove magic word .org to reply
Home pe...@ibbotson.co.uk.plugh.org | I own the domain but theres no MX
jmfb...@aol.com
IIRC, about a year after Compaq bought it. But it was all moot
by that time. I started hearing from VMS customers who were
moving from VMS to Billyboy because they knew VMS was business
was ending.
> .. At one point there were several
>ports of NT, including Alpha and PPC. I'm not sure any are left.
I don't know what happened to those Alpha sources.
> .. My
>thought, based on knowing none of the facts, is that M$ somehow left the
>other groups swinging after the initial port.
IIRC, they were funding a second, maybe the third, version.
I was real curious about all this because Billyboy threw money
into a major Apple sector about the same time he did the deal
with funding NT on Alpha. I remember, after he pulled the plug
on Alpha, waiting for the plug to pop out of Apple. But I never
heard it happening.
>
>I'm really not sure why Compaq wanted DEC,
Sigh! I told you. Colorado's TEch support.
> ..except maybe for the
>manufacturing capability.
No, all that got sold off and stripped out of the
company. Compaq did not want any of that.
> .. It seems like as soon as the deal was
>completed they dismantled whatever was left after Palmer finished. I
>had thought they wanted to bolster their cred as an enterprise provider
>with Alpha, VMS, and Unix, but those seem to have been the pieces they
>got rid of first.
Palmer stripped out the Alpha. AFAIK, all hardware got sold;
disks, cpus, any comm, I never heard what happened to the TTYs.
I don't even know if Digital had any TTY biz then.
jmfb...@aol.com
rpl <plinnan...@NOSPAMyahoo.com> wrote:
>jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
>> In article <UsSdncp9FNF...@rogers.com>,
>> rpl <plinnan...@NOSPAMyahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>>jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
>>>
>
>>>>One would think that a sane person would
>>>>try to have his product work on two manufacturers' machines
>>>>just in case one decided to do something stupid.
>>>
>>>M$ stuff already runs on 2 architectures (Word for Mac f'rinstance) and
>>>several processors (Intel & AMD being the main ones).
>>
>>
>> And Alpha. MS funded the software development on the Alpha.
>> NT was going to replace DOS. Why be picky w.r.t. CPU
>> architecture?
>
>ummm... you're the one mentioned "One would think that..."
Well, my biz sense and Billyboy's is completely orthogonal.
One would think that but he proceeded to cut out his bridges
before he crossed them, IMO.
>
>>
>>>Impression I got was that the undermining was somewhat unintentional.
>>>DEC had nothing to compete with M$ software-wise in the GUI based
>>>microcomputer market and vice-versa. x86 uprocs weren't even close to
>>>the Alpha league so a working Alpha/NT solution could be easily dropped
>>>into an M$' customer who needed more powerful machines, and then DEC
>>>wouldn't have to worry about downwards compatibility for their customers
>>>who were starting to put PC's on desktops.
>>>
>>>But now the problem: NT running on Alpha is a direct competitor of
>>>VMS/Pathworks(/All-in-One) and is a lower-initial-cost solution.
>>
>>
>> Sigh! VMS was already dead.
>
>hmmm I seemed to have timewarped a bit; I was talking about early 90's
I am, too. Customers had already started to recognize the
signs of another self-foot-shooting.
I saw Carlybaby when she made the buyout of Compaq announcement.
The body language was close to obscene and all the policies
she decided after the buyout was completely, utterly nuts.
Not only did she do everything to piss off HP customers,
she also did everything to piss off all newly acquired
employees and the old HP employees.
She was completely berserk. I have not a clue why this
happened. One presumes that she wasn't nuts to get to
the level of CEO.
/BAH
jmfb...@aol.com
for...@dev.nul (Colonel Forbin) wrote:
>In article <xYydnRKTjYj...@rcn.net>, <jmfb...@aol.com> wrote:
>>
>>Sigh! Because Carlybaby did everything she could to
>>regress the biz back to the ink biz. Any corporate
>>knowledge that dealt with non-expendable items seems
>>to have been scrubbed out of their woodwork. The OS
>>biz is not a business that deals with expendables.
>>It is a product that is tuned and has replacement
>>parts and slowly changes over time depending on how
>>it is used. Each copy of an OS is unique and not
>>like any other because the usage conforms the soft/hardware.
>
>the company. It was a vehicle to her superstardom. She was a
>legend in her own mind. She has the mind of a crack whore.
Obviously.
>Literally. The same brain centers are involved.
That would make it impossible for her to get past
second-level PHBness. I don't understand how
she got to CEO level. You can't fuck it all the way up.
/BAH
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Peter Flass <Peter...@Yahoo.com> wrote:
> When was the plug pulled on NT/Alpha? At one point there were several
> ports of NT, including Alpha and PPC. I'm not sure any are left. My
Early 1997 or perhaps late 1996 - At the time I was at a PPOE where
a new standard for desktops was wanted to replace the Macs they were using.
For political reasons anything Intel based was to be avoided if possible,
but the large base of MS Office documents in the company had to be readable.
We had jyst about settled on NT/Alpha when the news broke.
We reluctantly proposed NT on Intel and were told to spend another
couple of weeks trying to come up with *any* alternative, but at the time
StarOffice on Linux (or anything else) wasn't anywhere near mature enough.
MSCHAEF.COM
Colonel Forbin <for...@dev.nul> wrote:
...
>Indeed, even if you were an incredibly talented programmer, the
>job market in the US now is so bad that you would likely be forced
>to accept whatever terms your employer dictates in order to remain
>employed at all.
Or change jobs...
This may sound callous, but companies that overcharge and/or sell products
that the market doesn't want go out of business. They must adapt. So must
people trying to sell their skills into the job market.
>No, Enron was created by Skilling and a few other arrogant folk .
I'm inclined to agree. Enron's compensation system rewarded realizible
revenue rather than cash flow. Deal makers would therefore sacrifice
short term cash to make long term revenue numbers that may or not
materialize. The financial controls that should have put a check on this
behavior weren't nearly effective enough to stem the flow of bad deals.
-Mike
--
http://www.mschaef.com
jmfb...@aol.com
sigh! You missed the essential point about Enron's methods
of making money. That was purely a Congressionally created
instrument. Buying and selling energy electric power futures
was part of that deregulation (a misnomer) bill. Look at
the complete mess it created in California. By artificial
bidding up the prices, lots of places got stuck. Once
those few Enron people figured out how to take advantage
of the very badly written legislation to make easy money,
there wasn't anything to stop them; there was no checks and
balances written into the law. It was a repeat of the
Savings and Loan debacle of the early 80s.
Yes, some of those people in Enron are to blame. 90%
of the blame should be in the laps of Congress. The
Enron thing had nothing to do with capitalism, even
though the Democrats love to feed this falsehood
to people who eat up their class warfare rhetoric.
It had everything to do with communist-imposed
mishandling of business.
MSCHAEF.COM
>In article <IeadnVeuquu...@io.com>,
...
>sigh! You missed the essential point about Enron's methods
>of making money.
No, I didn't.
>That was purely a Congressionally created
>instrument. Buying and selling energy electric power futures
>was part of that deregulation (a misnomer) bill.
Energy trading and energy derivatives trading is a good thing,
in that it allows companies to hedge risks around energy costs.
If you're worried about power costs going up and hurting your
aluminum plant's quarterly results, buy a call on electric
power and put a cap on the amount you'll pay for electricity.
> Look at
>the complete mess it created in California.
...
> By artificial
>bidding up the prices, lots of places got stuck.
Electric power in California was only a small part of the problem,
although perhaps the most visible.
For some other examples: look at Dabhol, Azurix, and the 'Energy
Consulting/Outsourcing' businesses they set up. All of these lost
money for Enron, none had to do with deregulation of the power
industry in California, or their price fixing.
> Once
>those few Enron people figured out how to take advantage
>of the very badly written legislation to make easy money,
>there wasn't anything to stop them; there was no checks and
>balances written into the law. It was a repeat of the
>Savings and Loan debacle of the early 80s.
...
>It had everything to do with communist-imposed
>mishandling of business.
Huh? How do you see the communists being involved?
-Mike
--
http://www.mschaef.com
Greg Menke
> In article <RYCdnYq1g5o...@rcn.net>, <jmfb...@aol.com> wrote:
> >In article <IeadnVeuquu...@io.com>,
> > Once
> >those few Enron people figured out how to take advantage
> >of the very badly written legislation to make easy money,
> >there wasn't anything to stop them; there was no checks and
> >balances written into the law. It was a repeat of the
> >Savings and Loan debacle of the early 80s.
> ...
> >It had everything to do with communist-imposed
> >mishandling of business.
>
> Huh? How do you see the communists being involved?
>
Don't sweat it- these days she's more obsessed about
socialism/communism/whatever-ism than being pissed off at
well-connected, lying SOB's who get rich at the expense of everyone
outside their little clique.
Gregm
Andrew Swallow
> In article <RYCdnYq1g5o...@rcn.net>, <jmfb...@aol.com> wrote:
[sni]
>
>>It had everything to do with communist-imposed
>>mishandling of business.
>
>
> Huh? How do you see the communists being involved?
>
> -Mike
Indirectly. Communism was the alternative to laissez-faire.
Under laissez-faire governments do not do *naughty* things
like regulating industry. Such regulation was believed
to be bad for industry and the consumer.
This was naive - laissez-faire is extremely bad for
politicians since without the threat of regulation they
do not get bribes/campaign contributions.
Andrew Swallow
Charlie Gibbs
(jmfbahciv) writes:
> I saw Carlybaby when she made the buyout of Compaq announcement.
> The body language was close to obscene and all the policies
> she decided after the buyout was completely, utterly nuts.
> Not only did she do everything to piss off HP customers,
> she also did everything to piss off all newly acquired
> employees and the old HP employees.
That's standard procedure after a management takeover. You're
better off without all those old employees who are going to draw
on their experience to tell you why your latest scheme won't work.
Better to replace them with a set of brand-new shiny syncophants
whose brains aren't yet tainted by real-world experience. If
you get the old employees to leave voluntarily (so to speak),
then you don't have to worry about expensive severance packages.
--
/~\ cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855.
/ \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!
Charlie Gibbs
jmfb...@aol.com (jmfbahciv) writes:
> IIRC, they were funding a second, maybe the third, version.
> I was real curious about all this because Billyboy threw money
> into a major Apple sector about the same time he did the deal
> with funding NT on Alpha. I remember, after he pulled the plug
> on Alpha, waiting for the plug to pop out of Apple. But I never
> heard it happening.
That's because they'll do anything to keep it from happening.
Microsoft needs Apple alive, but weak; otherwise not even Bill
could hold off the antitrust suits.
Rupert Pigott
Colonel Forbin wrote:
> In article <1123541674.9...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>,
> Rupert Pigott <dark...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >Colonel Forbin wrote:
> >> I seem to recall that's what Steve Bourne said about V7 Unix.
> >
> >I can understand that sentiment, I had the same feeling about
> >Linux 1.2.13. However V7 doesn't have pf or run Blender so it
> >would be about as much use as a chocolate teapot to me right
> >now. :)
> >
> >There are some embedded jobs I'm working on that would suit
> >something along the lines of V7 though.
>
> I would be much happier if software developers would recognize
> that some people actually use Unix and CDE instead of Linux
> and whatever-e and MS Windows.
I'm sure they would if they had ever seen it. For those of us
who have seen it we're left wondering "What's the big deal ?"
I am a little curious as to what you find so appealing about
CDE. FWIW KDE has a CDE "theme", ran fine on a Slot-A Athlon.
Cat's chance in hell of CDE running under V7. It brought our
Solaris boxes to their knees way back when. I had to wait a
few years before I found (Digital UNIX) boxes fast enough to
make it run, and even then it felt clunky, incomplete and
annoying.
> "Real" Unix doesn't even cost much these days...
Yup, plenty of BSD's out there. ;)
Cheers,
Rupert
jmfb...@aol.com
"Charlie Gibbs" <cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>In article <NNidnXKXw8E...@rcn.net>, jmfb...@aol.com
>(jmfbahciv) writes:
>
>> I saw Carlybaby when she made the buyout of Compaq announcement.
>> The body language was close to obscene and all the policies
>> she decided after the buyout was completely, utterly nuts.
>> Not only did she do everything to piss off HP customers,
>> she also did everything to piss off all newly acquired
>> employees and the old HP employees.
>
>That's standard procedure after a management takeover. You're
>better off without all those old employees who are going to draw
>on their experience to tell you why your latest scheme won't work.
>Better to replace them with a set of brand-new shiny syncophants
>whose brains aren't yet tainted by real-world experience. If
>you get the old employees to leave voluntarily (so to speak),
>then you don't have to worry about expensive severance packages.
But the she did had nothing to do with busines. For instance,
she was telling everybody where they had to bank and shit like
that. There was another one that was completely off the wall
but I can't recall.
jmfb...@aol.com
And how do you think those few SOBs get enough control so
that they can get rich? Liberals tend to spout socialism
which emphasizes equality. To make everybody "equal",
politics gets involved. Now you have a beginning of communism.
As ordinary people object, more rules are put in place so
that they can't escape the mandate that all assets be equally
distributed. Now, humans, being humans, get a taste of power
and riches as they boss everybody around. These try to
get more power and riches. Now you pigs who are more equal.
Over the decades, this separation of few and many, economically
becomes greater. The few become fewer and the many become more.
So far, the only check to this is competition which implies
business without government setting all the rules. You also
cannot have pure capitalism because that can prevent long-term
planning, and usually does.
Now, my hidden agenda has always been to preserve knowledge
so that the work doesn't have to be done all over again.
Take a good look at how badly knowledge and its preservation
was handled in the USSR. Those who had the itch of exploring
and trying new things were shot. Anybody who dared to think
innovation could not simply try something to see if it would
work. They had to first figure out if it would piss off
a PHB. You all know that doing remarkable work always pisses
off some PHB. In a communist environment, those PHBs had
guns and used them.
The Religious Right wishes to do a similar thing, only
they intend to force the same religion to be equally
distributed and will use the same methods to enforce it.
The same economic side effects will also occur. Take
a look at the Bakers and the Roberts and the Swaggarts.
/BAH
jmfb...@aol.com
"Charlie Gibbs" <cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>In article <Z7mdnZ2dnZ1INtKrnZ2dn...@rcn.net>,
>jmfb...@aol.com (jmfbahciv) writes:
>
>> IIRC, they were funding a second, maybe the third, version.
>> I was real curious about all this because Billyboy threw money
>> into a major Apple sector about the same time he did the deal
>> with funding NT on Alpha. I remember, after he pulled the plug
>> on Alpha, waiting for the plug to pop out of Apple. But I never
>> heard it happening.
>
>That's because they'll do anything to keep it from happening.
>Microsoft needs Apple alive, but weak; otherwise not even Bill
>could hold off the antitrust suits.
Yea, well, see, if I had to do the same thing, I'd make the
same money work for two or more ends. I just don't see what
he got out of the Alpha investment at all. He already had
Cutler and everything that came with him in his stable.
I interpreted the action as Billy starting to go berserk,
not to the extremes that Carlybaby did but starting down
that road.
jmfb...@aol.com
msc...@fnord.io.com (MSCHAEF.COM) wrote:
>In article <RYCdnYq1g5o...@rcn.net>, <jmfb...@aol.com> wrote:
>>In article <IeadnVeuquu...@io.com>,
> ...
>>sigh! You missed the essential point about Enron's methods
>>of making money.
>
>No, I didn't.
>
>>That was purely a Congressionally created
>>instrument. Buying and selling energy electric power futures
>>was part of that deregulation (a misnomer) bill.
>
>Energy trading and energy derivatives trading is a good thing,
>in that it allows companies to hedge risks around energy costs.
I did not say it was a bad thing. I said Congress splitting
up the business into illogical sectors is very bad. Especially
when the maintenance of the most important part of the country's
infrastructure is involved. When you create a Commodity Board
Exchange trading instrument that has no (how can I say this?)
1::1 association with reality, you get an Enron. The game
no longer dealt with power distribution but with derivatives
of the derivatives of that power distribution.
>If you're worried about power costs going up and hurting your
>aluminum plant's quarterly results, buy a call on electric
>power and put a cap on the amount you'll pay for electricity.
Of course. That is making a 1::1 of a commodity with reality.
Enron got out of business very quickly. They stopped paying
attention to their real business and started playing Monopoly.
>
>> Look at
>>the complete mess it created in California.
>....
>> By artificial
>>bidding up the prices, lots of places got stuck.
>
>Electric power in California was only a small part of the problem,
>although perhaps the most visible.
No, you haven't kept track of the ripples that has caused.
Instead of putting money into maintaining the infrastructure,
the money went into a derivative bank account and did no
productive work.
>
>For some other examples: look at Dabhol, Azurix, and the 'Energy
>Consulting/Outsourcing' businesses they set up. All of these lost
>money for Enron, none had to do with deregulation of the power
>industry in California, or their price fixing.
I've not heard of these. It sounds like some of the ripples I talked
about.
>
>> Once
>>those few Enron people figured out how to take advantage
>>of the very badly written legislation to make easy money,
>>there wasn't anything to stop them; there was no checks and
>>balances written into the law. It was a repeat of the
>>Savings and Loan debacle of the early 80s.
> ...
>>It had everything to do with communist-imposed
>>mishandling of business.
>
>Huh? How do you see the communists being involved?
Communism is government enforcing socialism. Socialism
is an economy where (supposedly) all people share the
wealth by getting everything for "free".
What I have never understood is their thinking; if everybody
in the world had a million dollars, everybody would be poor.
Steve O'Hara-Smith
jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
> Yea, well, see, if I had to do the same thing, I'd make the
> same money work for two or more ends. I just don't see what
> he got out of the Alpha investment at all.
Insurance agains Intel screwing up badly ?
jmfb...@aol.com
>jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
>
>> Yea, well, see, if I had to do the same thing, I'd make the
>> same money work for two or more ends. I just don't see what
>> he got out of the Alpha investment at all.
>
> Insurance agains Intel screwing up badly ?
Sigh! Intel had Alpha. Why have DEC people do the
NT work? He already had Cutler's team along with
Cutler's idea of what VMS should have been. Funding
the software development just didn't make sense.
I know why Palmer made the deal; he was a Billyboy
wannabe. I don't think either of them were smart
enough to figure out this was a way to keep DEC's most
productive people from working on producing anything.
Greg Menke
jmfb...@aol.com writes:
They get control the old-fashioned way, corruption, cronyism, lies,
duplicity. No need to invoke political ideology.
Gregm
Steve O'Hara-Smith
jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
> In article <20050812120702....@eircom.net>,
> Steve O'Hara-Smith <ste...@eircom.net> wrote:
> >On Fri, 12 Aug 05 08:35:49 GMT
> >jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
> >
> >> Yea, well, see, if I had to do the same thing, I'd make the
> >> same money work for two or more ends. I just don't see what
> >> he got out of the Alpha investment at all.
> >
> > Insurance agains Intel screwing up badly ?
>
> Sigh! Intel had Alpha.
Intel got Alpha sometime in 2001 IIRC but NT on Alpha was
dropped around 1997 so Intel did not have Alpha when MS were
spending money on doing NT for Alpha, DEC had it then.
> Why have DEC people do the NT work?
Pass on that one - perhaps DEC had the best available Alpha
experts, or perhaps it was just politics.
> I know why Palmer made the deal; he was a Billyboy
> wannabe. I don't think either of them were smart
> enough to figure out this was a way to keep DEC's most
> productive people from working on producing anything.
Billyboy is/was probably that smart.
rpl
> On Fri, 12 Aug 05 09:32:44 GMT
> jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
>
>
>>In article <20050812120702....@eircom.net>,
>> Steve O'Hara-Smith <ste...@eircom.net> wrote:
>>
>>>On Fri, 12 Aug 05 08:35:49 GMT
>>>jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Yea, well, see, if I had to do the same thing, I'd make the
>>>>same money work for two or more ends. I just don't see what
>>>>he got out of the Alpha investment at all.
>>>
>>> Insurance agains Intel screwing up badly ?
>>
>>Sigh! Intel had Alpha.
>
>
> Intel got Alpha sometime in 2001 IIRC but NT on Alpha was
> dropped around 1997 so Intel did not have Alpha when MS were
> spending money on doing NT for Alpha, DEC had it then.
>
>
>>Why have DEC people do the NT work?
>
>
> Pass on that one - perhaps DEC had the best available Alpha
> experts, or perhaps it was just politics.
>
>
>>I know why Palmer made the deal; he was a Billyboy
>>wannabe. I don't think either of them were smart
>>enough to figure out this was a way to keep DEC's most
>>productive people from working on producing anything.
>
>
> Billyboy is/was probably that smart.
>
The timeline is being skipped around so much my head's all twisted around.
hypothesis: Cutler wrote NT on condition it was for Alpha too, which was
fine with BG 'cause it's an in into the mini market; but after DEC fell
over it wasn't in M$ best interests to hang on to it (and remember by
this time DC was being featured in "Road and Track" magazine so you
couldn't really get smooth serial development). And Intel had caught up
to the point where marketing could smooth over the differences at least
to the PHB's.
Flash forward the last few years: AMD has had and been using Alpha's
low-end MB reference design for quite awhile; Alpha people are now at
Intel, too, and M$ has been incorporating odds-and-ends from VMS for the
last few releases. And HP has 2 of what are still the best OSes around
but can't do a thing with them because their people are spread out
across their competitors... or changing tires somewhere.
MSCHAEF.COM
...
>>For some other examples: look at Dabhol, Azurix, and the 'Energy
>>Consulting/Outsourcing' businesses they set up. All of these lost
>>money for Enron, none had to do with deregulation of the power
>>industry in California, or their price fixing.
>
>I've not heard of these. It sounds like some of the ripples I talked
>about.
These were some of Enron's higher-profile failures. Dabhol refers to
a failed multi-billion dollar power project in India, Azurix refers
to Rebecca Mark's failed water business (which was considered to be
a way for Skilling to get her out of the way), and the outsourcing
refers to Enron's plan to sell energy services. They'd approach
clients with a line like "let us run your energy consumption, and
we'll save you X million$/year." It didn't work too well, and Enron
ended up paying the promised savings out of cash flow.
The history that caused these things to happen at a company that
once was a marginal gas pipeline operator is the basis of my
opinion of Enron's failure. If you hadn't heard of them, there's
no wonder our opinions differ.
-Mike
--
http://www.mschaef.com
do.not.waste.your...@this.address.it.is.invalid
wrote:
>Unbridled capitalism is every bit as bad as unbridled communism.
>
It is just the same but with the suppression of socialist envy!
--
cerberus
MSCHAEF.COM
Colonel Forbin <for...@dev.nul> wrote:
....
>Unfortunately, most homeowners can't buy a call on the electricity
>market.
Several things:
- Individuals can buy power commodities options through a broker.
- It's possible to package calls as part of energy service. This already
happens with natural gas: companies sell price flattened bills.
http://mn.centerpointenergy.com/nsb/nsb_description.asp
This is a form of an option.
- In some sense, the limits around this are technical. In some
locales, homeowners can already opt to buy interruptable power
to things like HVAC. Also, having a computer pull from a real
time price feed and drive a thermostat set point isn't technically
infeasible if there's demand for it.
>You really haven't a clue that economies ultimately exist to serve
>humanity, not the other way 'round.
That seems like something of a snap judgement on my cluefulness...
>Unbridled capitalism is every bit as bad as unbridled communism.
I agree, believe it or not.
However, if capitalism creates incentives for indidivuals to be more
sophisiticated about how they consume power, I'm not about to
complain.
-Mike
MSCHAEF.COM
Colonel Forbin <for...@dev.nul> wrote:
>In article <IeadnVeuquu...@io.com>,
>MSCHAEF.COM <mscha...@mschaef.com> wrote:
...
>>This may sound callous, but companies that overcharge and/or sell products
>>that the market doesn't want go out of business. They must adapt. So must
>>people trying to sell their skills into the job market.
>
>It is callous, and pretty soon the way things are going there aren't going
>to be many jobs left in the American economy where one can make a decent
>living,
That should read "decent living by first world standards".
The thing that offshore labor is again forcing Americans to do is justify
our standard of living. It's not a birthright and it's not something we're
entitled to: our standard of living is something we need to earn, again and
again. If it doesn't seem fair that we collectively have to work for our
standard of living, think how it must feel to people in the developing
world who don't have a decent standard of living to defend. These countries
have worked hard, have something of real value to sell, and can now use it
to raise their own standards of living.
The first world response to offshoring should be, IMHO:
- Determine how to encourage developing nations to develop socially and
idealogically, as they develop economically.
- Start trying to come up with ways the world can use all the new
productivity it's about to have. (Just look at all the millions
of new engineers and scientists entering the global workforce. The
potential for amazing new technologies is immense.)
- Take steps to keep strategically relevent. We need to retain deep
technical skills locally. Call it "saving for a rainy day".
>America, by your definition, is a nation that overcharges and sells products
>that "the market" doesn't want.
In some aspects of labor, yes. I don't know why this is a suprise, or an offense.
-Mike
--
http://www.mschaef.com
Steve O'Hara-Smith
for...@dev.nul (Colonel Forbin) wrote:
> In article <1123806828....@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> Rupert Pigott <dark...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >Yup, plenty of BSD's out there. ;)
>
> Snort. The last "real" BSD was 4.4 Encumbered.
That would be 4.4-Lite 2 ? The one with bits missing ?
Steve O'Hara-Smith
for...@dev.nul (Colonel Forbin) wrote:
> In article <20050810130815....@eircom.net>,
> Steve O'Hara-Smith <ste...@eircom.net> wrote:
> >
> > We reluctantly proposed NT on Intel and were told to spend another
> >couple of weeks trying to come up with *any* alternative, but at the time
> >StarOffice on Linux (or anything else) wasn't anywhere near mature enough.
>
> Or perhaps convert the Office docs to a more portable format?
A nice idea but they had many terabytes of Office junk, and
more was being created constantly. The standardisation on a new desktop
environment was only for one part of the company, most of the rest was
likely to carry on using MS Office on Mac or PC until they chose something
else.
> The only reason MS has a monopoly is because people accept its constant
> violation of information interchange standards which is a key tool it
Sure - said PPOE had already had enough trouble handling the
documents *with* MS Office tools on different platforms, but nobody
else would even /claim/ to be able to cope with it.
> uses to sustain its monopoly. It's kind of like IBM mainframes...
Sure the other one being the delightful bundling of standard
and proprietary functionality into Exchange and Outlook - result try
to select a decent MTA and the whole organisation howls about the
calendar not being supported.
Charlie Gibbs
do.not.waste.your...@this.address.it.is.invalid
(do.not.waste.your.time.emailing.me) writes:
Socialist envy is replaced by materialist envy.
"Under capitalism, man exploits man.
Under communism, it's the other way around."
Philip Nasadowski
Well - I guess it stopped...
*running from the tomatos*
Eugene Miya
Philip Nasadowski <nasa...@nospam.usermail.com> wrote:
>Bck to the topic - whatever happened to NonStop OS?
>Well - I guess it stopped...
Copies are running out in the world.
Go to the tandem group.
--
Eugene Miya
Colonel Forbin <for...@dev.nul> wrote:
>The only reason MS has a monopoly is because people accept its constant
>violation of information interchange standards which is a key tool it
Only is too strong a word.
It has its monopoly due to neglect, but their legal disclaimers
also contribute.
--
jmfb...@aol.com
border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!newshub.sdsu.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!arclight.
uoregon.edu!news.u.washington.edu!newspeer1.mlpsca01.us.to.verio.net!verio!new
sread1.mlpsca01.us.to.verio.net.POSTED!92c6ff8c!not-for-mail
>From: Steve O'Hara-Smith <ste...@eircom.net>
>Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
>Subject: Re: What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
>Message-Id: <20050812131111....@eircom.net>
>References: <uynJe.65378$yC5....@tornado.ohiordc.rr.com>
> <89idnZ9dxIg...@rcn.net>
> <2sPJe.5807$rI6...@twister.nyroc.rr.com>
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> <861.84T14...@kltpzyxm.invalid>
> <XoSdnXANZKm...@rcn.net>
> <20050812120702....@eircom.net>
> <H_mdnd0guPz...@rcn.net>
>Organization: Steve O'Hara-Smith
>X-Newsreader: Sylpheed version 2.0.0 (GTK+ 2.6.9; i386-portbld-freebsd4.8)
>Mime-Version: 1.0
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>Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2005 13:11:11 +0100
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>X-Complaints-To: ab...@verio.net
>X-Trace: newsread1.mlpsca01.us.to.verio.net 1123851846 194.165.165.147 (Fri,
12 Aug 2005 13:04:06 GMT)
>NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2005 13:04:06 GMT
>Xref: number1.nntp.dca.giganews.com alt.folklore.computers:285726
>Status: N
>
>On Fri, 12 Aug 05 09:32:44 GMT
>jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
>
>> In article <20050812120702....@eircom.net>,
>> Steve O'Hara-Smith <ste...@eircom.net> wrote:
>> >On Fri, 12 Aug 05 08:35:49 GMT
>> >jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
>> >
>> >> Yea, well, see, if I had to do the same thing, I'd make the
>> >> same money work for two or more ends. I just don't see what
>> >> he got out of the Alpha investment at all.
>> >
>> > Insurance agains Intel screwing up badly ?
>>
>> Sigh! Intel had Alpha.
>
> Intel got Alpha sometime in 2001 IIRC
Nope. Alpha was one of the things Palmer sold so that
puts it before Compaq bought DEC. Now, Alpha intellectual
property may not have been part of the package but the
manufacturing plant was selling Alpha, IMO.
> ..but NT on Alpha was
>dropped around 1997 so Intel did not have Alpha when MS were
>spending money on doing NT for Alpha, DEC had it then.
>
>> Why have DEC people do the NT work?
>
> Pass on that one - perhaps DEC had the best available Alpha
>experts, or perhaps it was just politics.
Or a diabolical plan. I always thought it was set up that
way so that when the rug was pulled, there wouldn't be
any chance of the DEC-experts continuing the work.
>
>> I know why Palmer made the deal; he was a Billyboy
>> wannabe. I don't think either of them were smart
>> enough to figure out this was a way to keep DEC's most
>> productive people from working on producing anything.
>
> Billyboy is/was probably that smart.
Ptui. He would never approach JMF's ankle level.
/bahfuckitBAH
jmfb...@aol.com
for...@dev.nul (Colonel Forbin) wrote:
>Path:
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r.columbus.rr.com!tornado.ohiordc.rr.com.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail
>Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
>Subject: Re: What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
<UT5Ke.65713$yC5....@tornado.ohiordc.rr.com>
<NNidnW2Xw8H...@rcn.net>
>From: for...@dev.nul (Colonel Forbin)
>X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test76 (Apr 2, 2001)
>X-No-Archive: yes
>Lines: 35
>Message-ID: <8i0Me.62906$B52....@tornado.ohiordc.rr.com>
>Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 12:56:36 GMT
>NNTP-Posting-Host: 65.24.55.172
>X-Complaints-To: ab...@rr.com
>X-Trace: tornado.ohiordc.rr.com 1124110596 65.24.55.172 (Mon, 15 Aug 2005
08:56:36 EDT)
>NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 08:56:36 EDT
>Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com
>Xref: number1.nntp.dca.giganews.com alt.folklore.computers:285781
>Status: N
>
>In article <NNidnW2Xw8H...@rcn.net>, <jmfb...@aol.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>In article <UT5Ke.65713$yC5....@tornado.ohiordc.rr.com>,
>> for...@dev.nul (Colonel Forbin) wrote:
>>>In article <xYydnRKTjYj...@rcn.net>, <jmfb...@aol.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>Sigh! Because Carlybaby did everything she could to
>>>>regress the biz back to the ink biz. Any corporate
>>>>knowledge that dealt with non-expendable items seems
>>>>to have been scrubbed out of their woodwork. The OS
>>>>biz is not a business that deals with expendables.
>>>>It is a product that is tuned and has replacement
>>>>parts and slowly changes over time depending on how
>>>>it is used. Each copy of an OS is unique and not
>>>>like any other because the usage conforms the soft/hardware.
>>>
>>>Carly wanted to be a rockstar CEO. She didn't give a damn about
>>>the company. It was a vehicle to her superstardom. She was a
>>>legend in her own mind. She has the mind of a crack whore.
>>
>>Obviously.
>>
>>>Literally. The same brain centers are involved.
>>
>>That would make it impossible for her to get past
>>second-level PHBness. I don't understand how
>>she got to CEO level. You can't fuck it all the way up.
>
>I don't think you understood.
I understood.
> The neurophysiology/pharmacology
>of cocaine involves the same brain centers as greed and lust for
>power. Bush and Clinton are both known to be great fanciers of
>cocaine, BTW.
Never heard about Clinton. He came from an addictive family.
/BAH
jmfb...@aol.com
Philip Nasadowski <nasa...@nospam.usermail.com> wrote:
border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!
cyclone1.gnilink.net!spamkiller2.gnilink.net!gnilink.net!trndny06.POSTED!0b9d9
408!not-for-mail
>From: Philip Nasadowski <nasa...@nospam.usermail.com>
>Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
>Subject: Re: What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
>References: <dcu042$ltr$1...@panix5.panix.com>
<JM5Ke.65711$yC5....@tornado.ohiordc.rr.com> <IeadnVeuquu...@io.com>
<RYCdnYq1g5o...@rcn.net> <E4mdnd-EtPb...@io.com>
<cvWdnfALM9x...@rcn.net>
>User-Agent: MT-NewsWatcher/3.2 (PPC Mac OS X)
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>Lines: 5
>Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 02:58:28 GMT
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>Xref: number1.nntp.dca.giganews.com alt.folklore.computers:285797
>Status: N
>
>Bck to the topic - whatever happened to NonStop OS?
>
>Well - I guess it stopped...
Does this NonStop OS have anything to do with their SMP attempt?
>
>*running from the tomatos*
My tomatoes are still green and I intend to eat them. ;-)
/BAH
K Williams
Sure ya' did /BAH. He didn't snort. ;-)
--
Keith
jmfb...@aol.com
K Williams <k...@att.bizzzz> wrote:
>Path:
border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!
newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!newsfeed01.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!fu-berlin.de
!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail
I must be doing this. Since I've never posted this crap before,
is there a magic word for all this stuff so I can try to find the
clickee to turn it off?
<snip a whole lotta shit>
>Sure ya' did /BAH. He didn't snort. ;-)
That is one thing I don't think I've heard him say.
/BAH
Steve O'Hara-Smith
for...@dev.nul (Colonel Forbin) wrote:
> Bush and Clinton are both known to be great fanciers of
> cocaine, BTW.
Hmm so that's why their employees have been so busy stealing it
from honest risk taking importers, wholesalers and retailers :)
Steve O'Hara-Smith
jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
> In article <20050812131111....@eircom.net>,
> Steve O'Hara-Smith <ste...@eircom.net> wrote:
> >On Fri, 12 Aug 05 09:32:44 GMT
> >jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
> >
> >> In article <20050812120702....@eircom.net>,
> >> Steve O'Hara-Smith <ste...@eircom.net> wrote:
> >> >On Fri, 12 Aug 05 08:35:49 GMT
> >> >jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> Yea, well, see, if I had to do the same thing, I'd make the
> >> >> same money work for two or more ends. I just don't see what
> >> >> he got out of the Alpha investment at all.
> >> >
> >> > Insurance agains Intel screwing up badly ?
> >>
> >> Sigh! Intel had Alpha.
> >
> > Intel got Alpha sometime in 2001 IIRC
>
> Nope. Alpha was one of the things Palmer sold so that
> puts it before Compaq bought DEC.
Hmm - digging about I see rumours started about Intel contemplating
buying Alpha in October 1997 but the ZDNet (for example) report of the
actual purchase is dated June 2001 (http://www.zdnet.co.uk/print?
TYPE=story&AT=2089920-39020354t-10000009c).
Either way October 1997 was after NT on Alpha was dropped,
which must have happened before April 1997 because I left the PPOE
where it mattered then. So I still contend that Intel did not have
the Alpha when MS were spending money on NT for Alpha, it was still
with DEC.
> > Billyboy is/was probably that smart.
> Ptui. He would never approach JMF's ankle level.
He appears to be very good at manipulating people and companies
to his advantage.
> /bahfuckitBAH
There are utilities for remapping the caps lock key :)
Mikko Nahkola
Don't know about the S but MP the hardware certainly was, from what I've
read. Some of the late-release architecture blurbs on HP's website seemed
to suggest that it'd be classified as a NUMA platform.
Of course, I've never used any such. It's just that one of my wife's
aunts used to use some such at work back when she still was young enough to
work, and recently it turned out that getting her typewriter repaired is
getting to be a bit of a problem, and I'm the Official Computer Geek in
her side of the family too nowadays...
I think she finally got the idea that the cheap PCs advertised all over
nowadays are _rather_ different from the Tandem thing.
--
Mikko Nahkola <mnah...@trein.ntc.nokia.com>
#include <disclaimer.h>
#Not speaking for my employer. No warranty. YMMV.
grey...@gmaildo.ttocom
jmfb...@aol.com
Steve O'Hara-Smith <ste...@eircom.net> wrote:
>On Tue, 16 Aug 05 13:38:38 GMT
>jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
>
>> In article <20050812131111....@eircom.net>,
>> Steve O'Hara-Smith <ste...@eircom.net> wrote:
>> >On Fri, 12 Aug 05 09:32:44 GMT
>> >jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
>> >
>> >> In article <20050812120702....@eircom.net>,
>> >> Steve O'Hara-Smith <ste...@eircom.net> wrote:
>> >> >On Fri, 12 Aug 05 08:35:49 GMT
>> >> >jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> >> Yea, well, see, if I had to do the same thing, I'd make the
>> >> >> same money work for two or more ends. I just don't see what
>> >> >> he got out of the Alpha investment at all.
>> >> >
>> >> > Insurance agains Intel screwing up badly ?
>> >>
>> >> Sigh! Intel had Alpha.
>> >
>> > Intel got Alpha sometime in 2001 IIRC
>>
>> Nope. Alpha was one of the things Palmer sold so that
>> puts it before Compaq bought DEC.
>
> Hmm - digging about I see rumours started about Intel contemplating
>buying Alpha in October 1997 but the ZDNet (for example) report of the
>actual purchase is dated June 2001 (http://www.zdnet.co.uk/print?
>TYPE=story&AT=2089920-39020354t-10000009c).
I thought it was Intel who bought the fabrication plant in
Hudson, MA. Who did then?
>
> Either way October 1997 was after NT on Alpha was dropped,
>which must have happened before April 1997 because I left the PPOE
>where it mattered then. So I still contend that Intel did not have
>the Alpha when MS were spending money on NT for Alpha, it was still
>with DEC.
JMF died in 1995. IIRC, he was fooling with NT in 1993 or 1994.
This was under MS funding. I'd have to try to find the invoices
of his purchases of NT disks.
>
>> > Billyboy is/was probably that smart.
>> Ptui. He would never approach JMF's ankle level.
>
> He appears to be very good at manipulating people and companies
>to his advantage.
Yup. There's not an ethical bone in his body.
>
>> /bahfuckitBAH
>
> There are utilities for remapping the caps lock key :)
[muttering emoticon here]
I'm having a very difficult time trying to change things one
at a time to get this laptop ultile w.r.t. newsgroups. I haven't
even begun to try to teach it about AOL which is where my mail
resides, unopened and unread.
Since I have no way to compare the RCN newsserver service,
I cannot tell if the aberrations I'm seeing are them or me.
I hate going cold turkey without any control group.
/BAH
jmfb...@aol.com
grey...@gmaildo.ttocom wrote:
>On Tue, 16 Aug 05 13:38:38 GMT, jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
>>
>> /bahfuckitBAH
>>
> ^^^^^^^ Oh, joy!
<GRIN> It's a good thing I'm old-fashioned enough to not
have gear that keys in my voice commentary as I'm typing
this.
/BAH
jmfb...@aol.com
Greg Menke <gregm-...@toadmail.com> wrote:
>> In article <m31x50s...@athena.pienet>,
>> Greg Menke <gregm-...@toadmail.com> wrote:
>> >msc...@fnord.io.com (MSCHAEF.COM) writes:
>> >
>> >> In article <RYCdnYq1g5o...@rcn.net>, <jmfb...@aol.com> wrote:
>> >> >In article <IeadnVeuquu...@io.com>,
>> >> > Once
>> >> >those few Enron people figured out how to take advantage
>> >> >of the very badly written legislation to make easy money,
>> >> >there wasn't anything to stop them; there was no checks and
>> >> >balances written into the law. It was a repeat of the
>> >> >Savings and Loan debacle of the early 80s.
>> >> ...
>> >> >It had everything to do with communist-imposed
>> >> >mishandling of business.
>> >>
>> >> Huh? How do you see the communists being involved?
>> >>
>> >
>> >
>> >Don't sweat it- these days she's more obsessed about
>> >socialism/communism/whatever-ism than being pissed off at
>> >well-connected, lying SOB's who get rich at the expense of everyone
>> >outside their little clique.
>>
>> And how do you think those few SOBs get enough control so
>> that they can get rich? Liberals tend to spout socialism
>> which emphasizes equality. To make everybody "equal",
>> politics gets involved. Now you have a beginning of communism.
>> As ordinary people object, more rules are put in place so
>> that they can't escape the mandate that all assets be equally
>> distributed. Now, humans, being humans, get a taste of power
>> and riches as they boss everybody around. These try to
>> get more power and riches. Now you pigs who are more equal.
>> Over the decades, this separation of few and many, economically
>> becomes greater. The few become fewer and the many become more.
>
>They get control the old-fashioned way, corruption, cronyism, lies,
>duplicity. No need to invoke political ideology.
But this is needed to acquire consent of the people and is
being used quite effectively by the Democrat leadership
to gain power. Their chairman made the regular news
broadcasts Sunday afternoon with a soundbite that
implied the American people were not in any danger
of terrorists' attack before Bush started this war
in Iraq. And the fucking commentators let him get
away with that one and CBS rebroadcast it very often.
You don't see the tactics here?
Again, this isn't about politics. I'm am trying to preserve
knowledge. If the Dems cede to the Islamic ideologues so
that they can "win" the White House, most of the knowledge
I'm trying to preserve will be destroyed since it was all
produced by people within Western civilization.
/BAH
jmfb...@aol.com
Mikko Nahkola <mnah...@trein.ntc.nokia.com> wrote:
>In article <n4-dnWrD5J_...@rcn.net>, jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
>> In article <nasadowsk-A49D0...@news.verizon.net>,
>> Philip Nasadowski <nasa...@nospam.usermail.com> wrote:
>
>>>Bck to the topic - whatever happened to NonStop OS?
>>>
>>>Well - I guess it stopped...
>>
>> Does this NonStop OS have anything to do with their SMP attempt?
>
>Don't know about the S but MP the hardware certainly was, from what I've
>read. Some of the late-release architecture blurbs on HP's website seemed
>to suggest that it'd be classified as a NUMA platform.
I was curious. JMF interviewed with them in IIRC 1991 for a job
slot that had been created to "save" their SMP project. From what
JMF said, the whole thing was a mess which made it an ideal job
for him. OTOH, he was told that the mess had to be completely
cleaned up and shipped out 8 months from now. Not even a bit
god of JMF's calibre could have done that. I never heard what
happened to that project.
>
>Of course, I've never used any such. It's just that one of my wife's
>aunts used to use some such at work back when she still was young enough to
>work, and recently it turned out that getting her typewriter repaired is
>getting to be a bit of a problem, and I'm the Official Computer Geek in
>her side of the family too nowadays...
<GRIN> typewriters.NE.computers
>
>I think she finally got the idea that the cheap PCs advertised all over
>nowadays are _rather_ different from the Tandem thing.
They sure seem to be cheap. The money one pays to minimize
the headaches and butt aches are not.
/BAH
Tom Van Vleck
> > Does this NonStop OS have anything to do with their SMP attempt?
>
> Don't know about the S but MP the hardware certainly was, from what I've
> read. Some of the late-release architecture blurbs on HP's website seemed
> to suggest that it'd be classified as a NUMA platform.
When I started at Tandem in 1981, they were selling systems
with from two to 16 custom 16-bit minicomputers
interconnected by a duplexed bus. Each mini had its own
memory and copy of the OS, and every I/O device was
reachable from multiple CPUs. Software was written in
Tandem's TAL language. Application processes were paired:
a primary process would checkpoint its state to a backup
process on another CPU; if a problem occurred, a whole CPU
would go down and the backup processes would become
primary. The OS was elegant and spare, relied on message
passing between processes. File system ran in its own
process, for example.
The company started selling fault tolerance, but what
attracted many customers was easy expandability, and the
networking implementation that allowed systems to
interconnect easily. We had a global scope single system
image: one could open a file anywhere with a path name
like \SVLDEV.$USER01.TOMV.DATA.
Tandem had a swimming pool behind the main building, with
TANDEM in tiles on the bottom (Google Earth is too fuzzy
for me to see if it still says that. 37d 19m 36.07s N,
122d 00m 35.25s W) where we used to stand around and drink
beer at the Friday Beer Busts.
Greg Menke
Give it a rest. The "people's consent" is never required- all you have
to do is get the votes. And you do that by pandering whenever possible.
If a Democrat was in power would you be vaporing away about how horrible
the Republicans were because they were trying to do the same thing? Or
is the GOP somehow more moral and upstanding and thus above such
tactics? Tell me another one, I enjoy a laugh in the morning.
Of Course the Dems want to be in power. Of Course they'll do whatever
they can to get there. The Republicans would and have done the same
thing whenever the shoe has been on the other foot.
The media lets all of them get away with lies & duplicity so often
because they're whores for power & its easier to be a PR outlet than an
investigative reporter. Sometimes you can get actual news out- but the
sad thing is The Daily Show (being a comedy news show) is probably more
honest than most any other of the TV news programs. For heaven's sake
it takes something like Rove's shenanigans to get the White House
reporters to even ASK a pointed question.
When you start ranting about how horrible the Dems are you sound like
the North Korean news ministry. Next it'll be Democrat Running Dogs for
petes sake. Give it a try, its good for a laugh and everybody will
appreciate the rhetoric update.
Gregm