Predictions - just for the hell of it
Bill Todd
Compaq's Q1 results will be unimpressive in revenue, profit, or both. Funny
how in the Q4 Financial Discussion they pointed out that there were "signs
of returning corporate customer purchases" that accounted for the 14%
up-swing from the disasterous Q3 - but still projected that revenue would
*decrease* 10% in 2002Q1 back to near-Q3 levels: nah, no fudging of numbers
there...
McKinley's 1 GHz SPECint2K numbers will also be unimpressive, especially
given that this is the core users will have to live with (with only a
process shrink/cache bump) until at least 2005: 700 max, possibly as low as
600, probably around 650. Its performance running 32-bit code will be
(relatively) even worse than Merced's (which appears to run 32-bit
SPECint-style code at about 1/6th native 64-bit speed and 32-bit
SPECfp-style code at about 1/15th native 64-bit speed): most improvement
will be due to the increase in clock speed alone.
Medium term:
Unless the nascent recovery accelerates dramatically instead of developing
speed slowly, combined HP/Compaq revenues for 2002 will be down compared
with their (poor) performance in 2001. Considerably more than 15K jobs will
be cut as a result of the merger (the established response to
less-than-predicted performance), though Carly & Curly, accomplished
knife-wielders though they are, may be hard pressed to fit them all into
this calendar year. HP stock price won't recover much beyond
pre-merger-announcement levels, and won't even reach those unless the
recovery is robust enough to drag it along by its ears.
VMS will at best receive no more attention than it currently does: C&C have
both said and shown that they believe they have far more important fish to
fry. This means it will continue its slow slide downward: while it will
nominally have more people working on it due to the porting effort (so
generously funded largely by Intel, it seems), there will as a result of
that effort be considerably less net work done on OS development - and this
may well be what saves it from more immediate extinction, since the influx
of Intel money for the port largely eliminates VMS's cost.
1 year out:
Hammer will have taken off, McKinley use will still be relatively
inconsequential (though not as invisible as Merced is today, unless Intel
actually throws in the towel by then). Sun will have announced a port of
Solaris to Hammer (if they don't do that much earlier). HP will have
started looking for a new CEO and President (unless they come to their
senses and do so sooner).
- bill
Paul Repacholi
> Compaq's Q1 results will be unimpressive in revenue, profit, or
> both. Funny how in the Q4 Financial Discussion they pointed out
> that there were "signs of returning corporate customer purchases"
> that accounted for the 14% up-swing from the disasterous Q3 - but
> still projected that revenue would *decrease* 10% in 2002Q1 back to
> near-Q3 levels: nah, no fudging of numbers there...
Part of the Q4 results could well have been folks who needed replaced
kit, and wanted it *NOW*, to hell with the cost. Getting a hundred or
so 7K vaxes at short order should provide a small profit for some one
for instance.
--
Paul Repacholi 1 Crescent Rd.,
+61 (08) 9257-1001 Kalamunda.
West Australia 6076
Raw, Cooked or Well-done, it's all half baked.
EPIC, The Architecture of the future, always has been, always will be.
JF Mezei
> Part of the Q4 results could well have been folks who needed replaced
> kit, and wanted it *NOW*, to hell with the cost. Getting a hundred or
> so 7K vaxes at short order should provide a small profit for some one
> for instance.
Didn't that Quarter also have a big blip dues to a sale at Tandem ?
By the way, i read some news article from some HP guy who said that the HP
services division will be well below expextations for this quarter.
I don't think that Wall Street will make much of Compaq's numbers. Compaq is
going out of business. They will be looking at HP's numbers.
Once Carly has announced her product roadmaps, it will be most interesting to
see how confidence/sales is restored.
If Carly can't provide technical information about the future of HP's Unix
product and how it will get there (and how quickly), wouldn't that result in
reduced sales because of the uncertaintly of the product and how "painful" the
transition will be ?
How long would it technically take to "merge" Tru64 into HP-UX ? Is that as
involved as a port to a new platform ? Or will Carly elect to have a "long
term plan" to integrate bits and pieces progressively as part of annyual
software updates (as opposed to a one time big change to integrate a whole
bunch of stuff).
Alan Winston - SSRL Admin Cmptg Mgr
>"Bill Todd" <bill...@metrocast.net> writes:
>
>> Compaq's Q1 results will be unimpressive in revenue, profit, or
>> both. Funny how in the Q4 Financial Discussion they pointed out
>> that there were "signs of returning corporate customer purchases"
>> that accounted for the 14% up-swing from the disasterous Q3 - but
>> still projected that revenue would *decrease* 10% in 2002Q1 back to
>> near-Q3 levels: nah, no fudging of numbers there...
>
>Part of the Q4 results could well have been folks who needed replaced
>kit, and wanted it *NOW*, to hell with the cost. Getting a hundred or
>so 7K vaxes at short order should provide a small profit for some one
>for instance.
Judging by the plaintive emails I got from Computer Clearing House begging for
used VAX 7000 kit, I'm guessing that someone (who got the profit) wasn't
Compaq.
-- Alan
===============================================================================
Alan Winston --- WIN...@SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU
Disclaimer: I speak only for myself, not SLAC or SSRL Phone: 650/926-3056
Physical mail to: SSRL -- SLAC BIN 69, PO BOX 4349, STANFORD, CA 94309-0210
===============================================================================
Terry C. Shannon
""Alan Winston - SSRL Admin Cmptg Mgr"" <win...@SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU>
wrote in message news:00A0B5B7...@SSRL04.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU...
> In article <87lmcjd...@prep.synonet.com>, Paul Repacholi
<pr...@prep.synonet.com> writes:
> >"Bill Todd" <bill...@metrocast.net> writes:
> >
> >> Compaq's Q1 results will be unimpressive in revenue, profit, or
> >> both. Funny how in the Q4 Financial Discussion they pointed out
> >> that there were "signs of returning corporate customer purchases"
> >> that accounted for the 14% up-swing from the disasterous Q3 - but
> >> still projected that revenue would *decrease* 10% in 2002Q1 back to
> >> near-Q3 levels: nah, no fudging of numbers there...
> >
> >Part of the Q4 results could well have been folks who needed replaced
> >kit, and wanted it *NOW*, to hell with the cost. Getting a hundred or
> >so 7K vaxes at short order should provide a small profit for some one
> >for instance.
>
> Judging by the plaintive emails I got from Computer Clearing House begging
for
> used VAX 7000 kit, I'm guessing that someone (who got the profit) wasn't
> Compaq.
No doubt! ;-}
Historically CPQ's 1FQ and 3FQ are less stellar than 2FQ and 4FQ. Of course,
the little matter of a Silicon Valley Soap Opera didn't help the company one
bit in 1FQ02!
Peter Quodling
> Paul Repacholi wrote:
> > Part of the Q4 results could well have been folks who needed replaced
> > kit, and wanted it *NOW*, to hell with the cost. Getting a hundred or
> > so 7K vaxes at short order should provide a small profit for some one
> > for instance.
>
> Didn't that Quarter also have a big blip dues to a sale at Tandem ?
>
> By the way, i read some news article from some HP guy who said that the HP
> services division will be well below expextations for this quarter.
I have seen on a couple of very major accounts, instances of HP trying
to pre-poach Compaq Hardware Sales in the lead up to the merger.
As for HP buying into the Compaq professional services business, it
literally doesn't exist anymore. They (Compaq) have had massive
layoffs and are rejecting new business. I think the few that remain in
senior positions, are posturing for as comfortable a fall from grace
as possible.
Personally, as a Compaq Stockholder, I am also wondering why I still
haven't received my Proxy paperwork, in spite of repeated requests.
Peter
Main, Kerry
>>> As for HP buying into the Compaq professional services business, it
literally doesn't exist anymore. They (Compaq) have had massive layoffs
and are rejecting new business. I think the few that remain in senior
positions, are posturing for as comfortable a fall from grace as
possible.<<<
Wow, where did that fud come from?
ROTFL ...
"rejecting new business?"
ROTFL .. Man, would that statement ever get a round of laughs from
Business Development folks we have in PS.
Like all Services groups from all companies, we would certainly not
engage in every opportunity that came our way as it might might make
better sense to use a Partner, but we are certainly not turning away
business in area's of core competancies .. PS OpenVMS VAX to Alpha
migrations are certainly going well right now in Canada (and US from
what I heard). We have 4 major VAX to Alpha engagements right now in
Eastern/Central that I am aware of and I do not deal with the Western
part of Canada.
Outsourcing services stuff is also going well from what I have heard.
Care to state where this fud came from so we can correct the source?
Regards
Kerry Main
Senior Consultant
Compaq Canada Corp.
Professional Services
Voice: 613-592-4660
Fax : 819-772-7036
Email: Kerry...@Compaq.com
Peter Quodling
> Peter -
> Wow, where did that fud come from?
>
> ROTFL ...
>
> "rejecting new business?"
>
> ROTFL .. Man, would that statement ever get a round of laughs from
> Business Development folks we have in PS.
>
those lucky people that brings in 20 Million dollars worth of business
a year, and doesn't survive one of the purges. A Month a go, when he
left compaq he had a 5 month front log of work, and a dozen people
working in his team. That frontlog has now disappeared, and the last
member of his team has been laid of.
HAve a look at Compaq Australia, where at last count, around 120 have
been laid off in the last month or so.
> Like all Services groups from all companies, we would certainly not
> engage in every opportunity that came our way as it might might make
> better sense to use a Partner, but we are certainly not turning away
> business in area's of core competancies ..
What we have seen is Partner's presenting business where the customer
wants to deal with compaq as a prime, but rather than subcontract it
back to the Partner, CPQ is dumping the business.
> Care to state where this fud came from so we can correct the source?
How's that? Send in Carly and Curly's thug squad to rough them up?
Peter
Main, Kerry
While I obviously have no view of what specific issues you are talking
about in Australia, and I will not state that the industry wide IT
downturn did not impact some aspects of services (like it did with all
services companies) I can say that local business issues are very
country specific.
Bottom line - making sweeping statements like Compaq Services "literally
doesn't exist anymore..." is a huge fud statement.
Regards,
Kerry Main
Senior Consultant
Compaq Canada Corp.
Professional Services
Voice: 613-592-4660
Fax : 819-772-7036
Email: Kerry...@Compaq.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Quodling [mailto:quod...@bigpond.net.au]
Sent: April 2, 2002 1:34 AM
To: Info...@Mvb.Saic.Com
Subject: Re: Predictions - just for the hell of it
Alan Greig
<Kerry...@Compaq.com> wrote:
>Peter,
>
>While I obviously have no view of what specific issues you are talking
>about in Australia, and I will not state that the industry wide IT
>downturn did not impact some aspects of services (like it did with all
>services companies) I can say that local business issues are very
>country specific.
>
>Bottom line - making sweeping statements like Compaq Services "literally
>doesn't exist anymore..." is a huge fud statement.
As a related point when we tried to used Compaq Services/DECmove
whatever its called to redesign our computer room and reposition
systems (with as little as possible downtime) Compaq thought about it
for a month or so then said they no longer had the resources to do it
and passed us on to another company. Note: not subcontracted so Compaq
income would be zero.
>Regards,
>
>
>Kerry Main
>Senior Consultant
>Compaq Canada Corp.
>Professional Services
>Voice: 613-592-4660
>Fax : 819-772-7036
>Email: Kerry...@Compaq.com
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Peter Quodling [mailto:quod...@bigpond.net.au]
>Sent: April 2, 2002 1:34 AM
>To: Info...@Mvb.Saic.Com
>Subject: Re: Predictions - just for the hell of it
>
>
>"Main, Kerry" <Kerry...@Compaq.com> wrote in message
>news:<BE56C50EA024184DAF48...@kaoexc01.americas.cpqcorp
--
Alan
JF Mezei
> systems (with as little as possible downtime) Compaq thought about it
> for a month or so then said they no longer had the resources to do it
> and passed us on to another company. Note: not subcontracted so Compaq
> income would be zero.
I have always seen 2 Digitals. The one that dealt with me, and the "dream" one
that had all the great stuff, red carpets, visits from sales critters etc.
When I was at a bank, getting the salescritter to come and help prevent some
department from kicking the vax out was impossible. Yet, I hear of other
customers who had available to them full resources from Digital, could get
some of the Mass. engineers to make technical presentations to their folks to
push for a new product.
When I asked for such a tech presentation to push the DECNET/SNA stuff to the
bank's IT technicians and managers, all I got was some local guy who knew
little about the product and wasted everyone's time. Yet, at DECUS events,
you'd meet other customers who had incredible service.
My view is that Mr Main is part of the "dream" Digital, while the rest of the
world has progressed to the one and only Digital I ever knew.
Had it not been for DECUS where I saw a version of Digital I had not
encounterered, I probably would have never been keen on pushing Digital, seing
its potential, and fighting to try to get the level of service that I had seen
other get.
I really see VMS as being downsized to the level of Tandem when each customer
is a well known entity and when they have announcements to make, they go visit
those customers individually because there aren't that many. At least those
customers will get good service and other customers are getting the hint that
Compaq isn't interested in having them stay with VMS.
That is the message I get. If that is not the message Compaq wants me to get,
it is up to Compaq to change its ways.
Alan Greig
>>I have always seen 2 Digitals. The one that dealt with me, and the "dream" one
>that had all the great stuff, red carpets, visits from sales critters etc.
>When I was at a bank, getting the salescritter to come and help prevent some
>department from kicking the vax out was impossible. Yet, I hear of other
>customers who had available to them full resources from Digital, could get
>some of the Mass. engineers to make technical presentations to their folks to
>push for a new product.
Yes there were two Digitals. One was called DEC and was outstanding, the latter
incarnation turned itself on its head and renamed itself Digital. Much of the
old DEC culture survived for many years and islands of it still exist today.
Ironically VMS engineering and the not quite dead yet Alpha and Storage design
teams represent the last coherent part of DEC culture still alive. Ironic
because VAX/VMS then Alpha was to be the driver behind the new Digital.
Helpfully Gordon Bell has made available DEC's suicide note on his Microsoft web
site at
http://research.microsoft.com/~gbell/Digital/VAX%20Strategy%20c1979.pdf
Although much of the document makes sense what is clear is that DEC and Bell had
lost touch with the customer. The document sets out the policy of dumping
multiple architectures and operating systems in favour of (at that time) VAX and
VMS with the logic being that they would piss off fewer customers by dropping
products bit by bit and most would accept the 'replacement' offerings. It
already contains sentences along the lines of "key customers are in favour" and
"we simplify things for them" etc, etc. Sound familiar?
From that point onwards DEC changed from a company responsive to customer needs
to one which attempted to drive the customer where it wanted them to go. To make
matters worse it then changed that direction every few years. First VMS, then
Unix then NT, now goodness knows where. Customers who wanted diversity were
dismissed as whiners or sore losers and many drifted away looking elsewhere.
Twenty years of this has ingrained it so deeply that multiple analysts and
customers just have no belief in anything Compaq says today.
At first the drift was slow and the strategy appeared to work. Digital did build
VAX and VMS up but too slowly and it kept it way overpriced and took a long,
long time to realise it had to keep software functionality up with the
competition. It relied on the DEC name and culture selling systems as it slowly
decimated that very culture. The low end and mid range competition caught up
and, even when Digital could still have played the game, it rolled over and
died.
Finally it convinced itself "there is no future in being different" and brought
about its own demise. The strategy that once boosted VMS into the stratosphere
has now almost come full circle. VMS and Alpha are now in the same position the
DEC-10 and DEC-20 line were in at the time of the Gordon Bell paper (circa
78/79). Gordon Bell the father of both the 36 bit line (PDP-6/10/20) and the 32
bit line authored the document which will finally likely kill VMS as it did
TOPS-10/20. It could not be more appropriate that both he and Dave Cutler are
now at Microsoft given that the document says that the plan will help Digital
compete with emerging PCs. Ooops!!!
The final, ultimate irony is that Microsoft itself may finally fall victim to
the same "one OS fits all" strategy as more and more folk choose not to be
driven and go for Linux. Some (in alt.sys.pdp10 especially) might not agree but
I still believe a portable VMS can have a healthy future as well. But does HP
and Compaq management. The answer has to be "no" unless they finally overturn
Bell's nearly a quarter of a century old policy paper. And perhaps MS should
embrace other architectures as well if it wants to last longer than the 40 or so
years DEC/Digital managed.
>When I asked for such a tech presentation to push the DECNET/SNA stuff to the
>bank's IT technicians and managers, all I got was some local guy who knew
>little about the product and wasted everyone's time. Yet, at DECUS events,
>you'd meet other customers who had incredible service.
>
>My view is that Mr Main is part of the "dream" Digital, while the rest of the
>world has progressed to the one and only Digital I ever knew.
Yep, much of the face of Digital we see in comp.os.vms reflects the little left
of the old DEC. I'm x-posting this so some may not agree but my memory tells me
it is so. In fact some of the current VMS team were there in the PDP-10 days.
When our current Alpha cluster was installed two years ago, Compaq FS turned out
in force and I met three engineers I had known from my DEC-20 days as a young,
innocent programer 20 years ago. They could all document every single wrong
headed decision DEC ever made. They are not listened to and instead a new bunch
of incompetents is appointed to run the company every few years. I really do
feel sorry for the highly enthusiastic Compaq employees who continue to stick
their heads above the parapet even as they get shot at. And I know I do it to
but that's because the real culprits won't defend themselves in public.
>Had it not been for DECUS where I saw a version of Digital I had not
>encounterered, I probably would have never been keen on pushing Digital, seing
>its potential, and fighting to try to get the level of service that I had seen
>other get.
DECUS until last year did still look a lot like the DECUS of 1980. Where it goes
from here who knows.
>I really see VMS as being downsized to the level of Tandem when each customer
>is a well known entity and when they have announcements to make, they go visit
>those customers individually because there aren't that many. At least those
>customers will get good service and other customers are getting the hint that
>Compaq isn't interested in having them stay with VMS.
>
>That is the message I get. If that is not the message Compaq wants me to get,
>it is up to Compaq to change its ways.
Well said!
Paul Repacholi
> >>> As for HP buying into the Compaq professional services business,
> it literally doesn't exist anymore. They (Compaq) have had massive
> layoffs and are rejecting new business. I think the few that remain
> in senior positions, are posturing for as comfortable a fall from
> grace as possible.<<<
> Wow, where did that fud come from?
It came from some one who was with DEC 20 years ago. You know
the Pak Generater? He wrote it.
> ROTFL ...
Don't laught, it is even grimer over here in the west.
Main, Kerry
Again, I have no idea of what the business conditions are or how the
global IT downturn has impacted Australia, but portraying what is
happening at a specific country level as something that is happening
corporate wide is neither fair or even accurate.
Regards,
Kerry Main
Senior Consultant
Compaq Canada Corp.
Professional Services
Voice: 613-592-4660
Fax : 819-772-7036
Email: Kerry...@Compaq.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Repacholi [mailto:pr...@prep.synonet.com]
Sent: April 2, 2002 2:34 PM
To: Info...@Mvb.Saic.Com
Subject: Re: Predictions - just for the hell of it
JF Mezei
>
> Paul,
>
> Again, I have no idea of what the business conditions are or how the
> global IT downturn has impacted Australia, but portraying what is
> happening at a specific country level as something that is happening
> corporate wide is neither fair or even accurate.
Nor is it accurate to project your positive experiences for the whole of
Digital. You seem to be a star player very much in demand and you get the
crème de la crème of projects. But outside of that, can you really say that
other folks are seing such positive work/developments on the VMS scene ?
Mark Crispin
> Helpfully Gordon Bell has made available DEC's suicide note on his Microsoft web
> site at
> http://research.microsoft.com/~gbell/Digital/VAX%20Strategy%20c1979.pdf
Funniest comment in the whole document:
"VMS and TOPS 20 have roughly the same functionality."
VMS never did match the functionality of TOPS-20.
-- Mark --
http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Main, Kerry
>>> But outside of that, can you really say that other folks are seing such positive work/developments on the VMS scene ?<<<
Well, fwiw, I do know of some large VAX to Alpha migration projects going on in the US (as well as Canada) and I do see the weekly WIN reports (and this does not include all partner stuff), so I can say that there is lots of stuff going on around the globe with respect to OpenVMS.
Is it better today than a year ago ? Don't know.
Is it busy all over? I doubt it. As previous replies have stated, the global IT downturn after 9/11 has impacted everyone in the services and consulting business, but, imho, that is not something that is specific to OpenVMS (or Compaq for that matter).
What types of OpenVMS work do I see from a Compaq perspective?
- IT consolidation (servers, databases, applications...all migrating to SAN's, big bonus if you can do multi-platform). Potential opportunity for tools to help automate consolidate servers (merging sysuafs, identifying duplicate and expired names etc).
- VAX to Alpha (for some reason, these seem to be popping up quite a bit these days)
- SAN integration and design (anyone can install a SAN - the real $'s kick in when the Cust Service guy turns to the Cust and says "how do you want it configured?". Need to understand current performance bottlenecks, current read/write ratio's etc)
- multi-site clusters (Oracle 8i OPS or Rdb is what most Cust's still using, but a few are kicking the tires with 9i) are big as 9/11 has made lots of Cust's start thinking about availability.
- security .. Again, 9/11 and recent hacker/virus attacks has made everyone extremely sensitive.
As an example: US Govt:"Defense Dept. seeks IT spending boost"
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-870547.html
- Middleware integration (BEA, IONA CSWS .. Other platforms are doing WebSphere and to much smaller degree iPlanet). This is the "Web Services" war between J2EE and .Net. Key benefit for Cust's is that they don't have big $'s for major projects so this is a way to integrate old technologies and database sources with new technologies (App servers, web enabling etc)
Anyway, just my $.02 ..
Regards,
Kerry Main
Senior Consultant
Compaq Canada Corp.
Professional Services
Voice: 613-592-4660
Fax : 819-772-7036
Email: Kerry...@Compaq.com
-----Original Message-----
From: JF Mezei [mailto:jfmezei...@videotron.ca]
Sent: April 2, 2002 4:47 PM
To: Info...@Mvb.Saic.Com
Subject: Re: Predictions - just for the hell of it
jmfb...@aol.com
<Pine.LNX.4.50.020402...@shiva1.cac.washington.edu>,
Mark Crispin <m...@CAC.Washington.EDU> wrote:
>On 2 Apr 2002, Alan Greig wrote:
>> Helpfully Gordon Bell has made available DEC's suicide note on his
Microsoft web
>> site at
>> http://research.microsoft.com/~gbell/Digital/VAX%20Strategy%20c1979.pdf
>
>Funniest comment in the whole document:
>
>"VMS and TOPS 20 have roughly the same functionality."
>
>VMS never did match the functionality of TOPS-20.
Bell never understood the importance of software. He spent a lot
of time getting rid of the upper level management who did.
/BAH
Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
Fred Kleinsorge
Arrrrrgh!!!n Whoever (Alan) the h*ll keeps writing these d*mned troll
messages...
PLEASE STOP IT! PLEASE STOP NOW!
Do we HAVE to keep getting into these idiotic rehashing of hurt feelings of
TOPS-20 users from 20 years ago? Now we'll have 300 replies complaining
about the lack of command completion.
The original message in this topic was STUPID enough. What exactly was the
need to spam alt.sys.pdp10?
STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP
nnnn
Mark Crispin wrote in message ...
Bill Todd
"Fred Kleinsorge" <klein...@star.zko.dec.com> wrote in message
news:6AFq8.1810$fL6....@news.cpqcorp.net...
> zczc
>
> Arrrrrgh!!!n Whoever (Alan) the h*ll keeps writing these d*mned troll
> messages...
>
>
> PLEASE STOP IT! PLEASE STOP NOW!
>
>
> Do we HAVE to keep getting into these idiotic rehashing of hurt feelings
of
> TOPS-20 users from 20 years ago?
Not if people want to keep their eyes tightly shut while similar things
happen again, I suppose. You seem doggedly determined to let history repeat
itself by ignoring both past precedent and present evidence, but others may
be more willing to learn.
Now we'll have 300 replies complaining
> about the lack of command completion.
>
> The original message in this topic was STUPID enough. What exactly was
the
> need to spam alt.sys.pdp10?
SPAM is in the eyes of the beholder. If you're not a devotee of
alt.sys.pdp10, it's not clear you have any basis for complaint about someone
who is such a participant having included them.
- bill
Fred Kleinsorge
life and stop re-writing history) designed purely to create
yet-another-one-of-these-useless-threads.
Not a single one of these inane dissertations that were spammed across
groups that included alt.sys.pdp10 had any other objective than to waste
peoples time, and continue some 20 year old argument that isn't really even
interesting anymore, no matter how many peoples feelings were hurt that
there pet architecture was tubed.
But let me assume that there was an intent to illuminate or teach us
something... To address the stupidity in the base note - if killing Alpha
leads to the same results that killing the DECsystem-20 did -- then lets all
cheer. Technical rants and lost souls aside - the VAX/VMS era was the most
successful time in the history of Digital Equipment.
Now to add this thread to my killfile.
Bill Todd wrote in message ...
Bill Todd
> Come on. The original mail was blatent BS ("DEC's suicide note" - get a
> life and stop re-writing history) designed purely to create
> yet-another-one-of-these-useless-threads.
I'm not sure what 'original mail' you're referring to: the original post on
the topic in the subject line was mine, and said nothing about "DEC's
suicide note" or anything like it.
...
> But let me assume that there was an intent to illuminate or teach us
> something... To address the stupidity in the base note - if killing Alpha
> leads to the same results that killing the DECsystem-20 did -- then lets
all
> cheer. Technical rants and lost souls aside - the VAX/VMS era was the
most
> successful time in the history of Digital Equipment.
You're comparing apples and oranges. The VAX/VMS era started in 1978, while
the 36-bit line was declared dying in 1983 IIRC. And as I was there for the
period 1976 - 1987, I can assure you that DEC's decline *did* begin around
the latter date (reasonable arguments could place it a bit earlier or later,
but not much), even though DEC's financial decline lagged the internal
upper-level management rot by several years.
>
>
> Now to add this thread to my killfile.
Which will likely improve its quality.
- bill
Mark Crispin
Perhaps it's because he has to dust off his resume, what with his
impending job loss once HP abolishes the last pathethic remnants of
Digital. He's now discovering that nobody wants to hire anyone a VMS
developer.
It's interesting how he labels a period in which customers abandoned
Digital en masse as "the most successful time in the history of Digital
Equipment."
Successful time? I can't think of a more egregious failure. Digital went
from being the #2 computer company to extinction. Digital totally missed
the personal computer revolution, and its feeble attempts to have PC
products were the joke of the industry.
Digital's terminal status was already obvious in 1988, a mere 5 years
after the 10/20 was canned.
Peter da Silva
Fred Kleinsorge <klein...@star.zko.dec.com> wrote:
>But let me assume that there was an intent to illuminate or teach us
>something... To address the stupidity in the base note - if killing Alpha
>leads to the same results that killing the DECsystem-20 did -- then lets all
>cheer. Technical rants and lost souls aside - the VAX/VMS era was the most
>successful time in the history of Digital Equipment.
There are a number of differences between IA64 and the VAX. Technical issues
aside:
Digital was 100% behind VAX/VMS: "all the wood behind one arrow",
and VMS was a new clean OS design with a single core vision... I
don't happen to care much for VMS but I do have to give it that.
CHomPaq has 2 UNIX variants it's trying to merge, a 64 bit NT that
it abandoned a few years back and now needs to resuscitate, and
three legacy operating systems (and they just killed one of them).
Plus they have IA32 and x86-64 competing with IA64, and no control
over that. And then there's active Linux work on all four hardware
platforms (ia32, x86-64, IA64, and Alpha). And it sometimes seems
most of the innovative people left are messing around with iPaq and
Itsy.
--
Rev. Peter da Silva, ULC. WWFD?
"Be conservative in what you generate, and liberal in what you accept"
-- Matthew 10:16 (l.trans)
Fred Kleinsorge
point that the decision to drop the 10/20 in favor of VAX/VMS was "suicide"
for DEC. My point is that if it was, then it was the best decision we ever
made. And if he is trying to draw Alpha comparisons, I can only hope it
will be as successful as that decision was.
Peter da Silva wrote in message ...
Fred Kleinsorge
not the 10/20.
Mark Crispin wrote in message ...
Bill Todd
"Bill Todd" <bill...@metrocast.net> wrote in message
news:INGq8.101367$VJ1.8...@bin3.nnrp.aus1.giganews.com...
>
> "Fred Kleinsorge" <klein...@star.zko.dec.com> wrote in message
> news:7bGq8.1813$fL6....@news.cpqcorp.net...
...
> > But let me assume that there was an intent to illuminate or teach us
> > something... To address the stupidity in the base note - if killing
Alpha
> > leads to the same results that killing the DECsystem-20 did -- then lets
> all
> > cheer. Technical rants and lost souls aside - the VAX/VMS era was the
> most
> > successful time in the history of Digital Equipment.
>
> You're comparing apples and oranges. The VAX/VMS era started in 1978,
while
> the 36-bit line was declared dying in 1983 IIRC. And as I was there for
the
> period 1976 - 1987, I can assure you that DEC's decline *did* begin around
> the latter date (reasonable arguments could place it a bit earlier or
later,
> but not much), even though DEC's financial decline lagged the internal
> upper-level management rot by several years.
On further reflection, my response above really doesn't adequately address
the lessons that should be learned, starting indeed 20 years ago. So I'll
expand a bit.
To a very large degree, the decline of DEC (and now Compaq) can be tightly
connected to several massive and massively-misguided attempts to drive users
in directions the company felt were most convenient/cost-effective for it
rather than letting customers tell the company what they wanted and acting
accordingly. In other words,
Maxim #1: Customers are like cats: trying to herd them is not usually
effective, especially when they have other options to choose from.
Maxim #2: Existing customers are birds in the hand; new customers are just
someone's dream of the future which may or may not be accurate.
Maxim #3: Therefore, providing customers with products they're eagerly
lining up to buy at a decent profit to you is usually not only the safest
but the most profitable course for a company to take. By all means also
develop new products for the future, but don't start phasing out your
existing ones until the new ones are at least equally acceptable - which
leads to
Maxim #4: Premature consolidation to reduce costs that don't need to be
reduced (because sufficient demand still exists for the wider product range
to return a good profit) is stupid, stupid, stupid: it pisses off your
customers unnecessarily and with *no* guarantee of compensating return. And
that's happened repeatedly at first DEC, now Compaq, and likely soon HP.
Or perhaps one can put it more simply: acting for your own perceived
convenience at the expense of your customers' doesn't work well unless
you're a monopoly, since at least some of your competitors likely won't be
that stupid.
Cases in point:
1. The death of the 36-bit machines. Consolidating to VAX would certainly
have been a reasonable strategy *if* VAX and the systems on it had been real
replacements in the eyes of the customer base. But VAX did not have the
performance to be such at the time Jupiter (and further 36-bit hardware
development) was cancelled, and VMS never got all the features the 36-bit
people wanted.
As a result, DEC alienated a whole lot of customers in the exact high-end
market segment it wanted to push VAX into. Had it waited for VAX to become
performance-competitive, not only would it have retained the business *and*
affection of those customers, but VMS would quite likely have had more
impetus to incorporate the features those customers found useful (given the
continuing internal competition). The degree of that alienation is still
very evident today, and *that* itself is significant. One could also
suggest that the 11 had a lot more life left in it than DEC took advantage
of, but while that too may have been a mistake it was a far less dramatic
one.
2. The one case DEC *did* handle half-decently was the transition from VAX
to Alpha. But that transition was *not* driven by consolidation desires but
rather by engineering considerations: RISC seemed a better bet for future
performance advances than CISC (over a dozen years later the success of IA32
may call that assessment into some question, but it certainly seemed true
then - and one should not forget that Intel has likely put an order of
magnitude more money into IA32 development than DEC put into Alpha), and 32
bits of address space was clearly not going to be sufficient forever in the
mid-range and up.
3. The infamous 'affinity' program. Again, an attempt to consolidate -
this time to a 'commodity' OS - and, again, a problem more because it was a
(drastically) premature attempt at replacement (and replacement of a
highly-profitable platform with a far-less-profitable one) rather than a
simple attempt to expand in new directions. Customers weren't pleased, and,
correctly fearing for VMS's owner's commitment, many left.
4. The cancellation of NT on Alpha. While the profitability may have been
marginal, the potential of having Alpha as the initial platform for Win64
was major. Instead, Compaq just elected to piss off another bunch of
customers in the hope that it *might* save a few bucks (if the adverse
customer reaction to the decision didn't cost far more than the savings, and
leaving aside the upside potential of Win64 on Alpha).
5. The death-notice for Alpha itself - *long* before Itanic was even usable
by VMS or Tru64, let alone had proven a decent replacement. Consolidation
(and treachery, in terms of solemn and repeated commitments summarily
broken) par excellence, but to an inferior platform - and, as usual, without
any apparent concern about how the existing customer base felt about it.
6. The decision not to port Tru64 to Itanic after all, despite both having
'committed' to when the Alphacide was announced *and* having major aspects
of the port already done (back when it was first planned). Given that the
Tru64 base is now supposedly comparable to VMS's, that should give people
here pause as well.
Those are just the biggies that come to mind off hand. Feel free to add
more.
Call it insensitivity to customer wishes. Call it excessive zeal for
cost-containment. Call it disasterous over-confidence in management's
abilities to control and/or predict markets. Call it monumental
incompetence.
Call it whatever you want, but it's a real pattern. And it started with the
36-bit material you seem still to refuse to learn from.
- bill
JF Mezei
>
> I'm just tired of 20 year old DS20 complaints. VAX/VMS propelled us to #2,
> not the 10/20.
As much as Fred is going to hate it, I fully agree with the above.
Ironic that deemphasizing VMS has resulted in Digital going from #2 down to oblivion.
Bill Todd
> Come on. I wasn't really doing the comparison. The moron tried to make a
> point that the decision to drop the 10/20 in favor of VAX/VMS was
"suicide"
> for DEC.
That would be incorrect, but subtly: the decision to drop the 10/20
significantly injured DEC (given how and when it occurred), but what was
*really* suicide for DEC was the *mindset* that led to the decision to drop
the 10/20.
My point is that if it was, then it was the best decision we ever
> made.
You're confused. The decision to develop VAX and VMS could arguably have
been the best decision DEC ever made (given the excellence of its
execution), but the decision to drop the 10/20 as and when it was done was a
major mistake.
- bill
Hans Vlems
one question: how many 10/20's did DEC/Digital sell and how many VMS
systems?
That should put things in perspective, wouldn't it.
OTOH I do understand Crispin's feelings and yes, VMS may go down the drain
in a
similar way as TOPS. That is the lesson: corporate policies have no relation
to
customer needs. So be it.
Hans Vlems
Fred Kleinsorge <klein...@star.zko.dec.com> wrote in message
news:G7Jq8.1827$fL6....@news.cpqcorp.net...
Mark Crispin
> "Fred Kleinsorge" <klein...@star.zko.dec.com> wrote in message
> > point that the decision to drop the 10/20 in favor of VAX/VMS was
> > "suicide" for DEC.
This is a perfect example of the mindset that killed Digital; slurs such
as "moron" at anyone who is not in harmony with Digital Political
Correctness.
> That would be incorrect, but subtly: the decision to drop the 10/20
> significantly injured DEC (given how and when it occurred), but what was
> *really* suicide for DEC was the *mindset* that led to the decision to drop
> the 10/20.
Of course.
There are scenarios in which dropping the 10/20 could have happened
without destroying Digital, but the Digital corporate mindset is what
rendered that injury into a mortal wound.
> My point is that if it was, then it was the best decision we ever
> > made.
> You're confused. The decision to develop VAX and VMS could arguably have
> been the best decision DEC ever made (given the excellence of its
> execution), but the decision to drop the 10/20 as and when it was done was a
> major mistake.
Right again.
Digital practically screamed to the world that it could not be trusted as
a vendor. People left that DECUS symposium knowing that they would be
told to clean out their desk, and these were people in the corporate world
that Digital was trying to hawk VAXen to. As a result, Digital got on the
"never buy" at quite a few large corporations. The trend may not have
been noticable in the immediate aftermath, but by 1988 it was
unmistakable.
Also, VAX and VMS never were significant players in either the PC
revolution or the Internet revolution. Although some early Internet UNIX
systems were based upon VAX, by the late 1980s the Attack of the Killer
Micros had wiped most of them out.
The 20, on the other hand, was a significant Internet player up until the
genesis of the web. SIMTEL20 was there until the early 90s. Digital
never "got" the Internet, and always saw it as a fringe market.
Mark Crispin
> Fred Kleinsorge wrote:
> > I'm just tired of 20 year old DS20 complaints. VAX/VMS propelled us to #2,
> > not the 10/20.
So did the public attitudes of Digital employees, such as Fred
Kleinsorge's postings.
JF Mezei
> > Ironic that deemphasizing VMS has resulted in Digital going from #2 down to oblivion.
>
> So did the public attitudes of Digital employees, such as Fred
> Kleinsorge's postings.
For as much as Mr Kleinsorge hates me, I do not think that he can be made
responsible for VMS's demise.
Sure, we may have liked to see the VMS engineers mount an internal revolt and
chain themselves to cover Curly's parking spot and make as much noise as
possible to outline the stupidity of Compaq squandering Alpha and VMS. But if
these guys are told not to worry and that everything is being taken care of,
then the motivation to risk your job by rebelling against the corporation just
isn't there.
Also remember that those employees are only told about the WINs, not about the
LOSSES. They may not even be aware of cases when Compaq sales critters are
pitching Windows to existing VMS sites.
Fred Kleinsorge
>> Fred Kleinsorge wrote:
>> > I'm just tired of 20 year old DS20 complaints. VAX/VMS propelled us to
#2,
>> > not the 10/20.
>> Ironic that deemphasizing VMS has resulted in Digital going from #2 down
to oblivion.
>
>So did the public attitudes of Digital employees, such as Fred
>Kleinsorge's postings.
>
Get a life. I didn't do anything. I'm sorry you are still pissed a couple
decades later. You have made it clear that VAX/VMS was the proximate cause
of the death of TOPS-20 - and thus have no interest or positive opinions
about VMS. If there was *anything* I could say that would cause you to buy
a VMS system. I'd... well. whatever. The simple truth is, regardless of
the reasons for killing the DEC-20, it was meaningless to the eventual
success and subsequent failure of DEC. DEC grew to #2 on the strength of
VAX/VMS, and then imploded for many reasons, each of which can create it's
own debate. But DEC was growing so fast on the strength of VAX/VMS, that
the DEC-20 became irrelevant.
If Tru64 or Windows had been propelling DEC or Compaq with the same growth
and profitability as VAX/VMS drove DEC - then VMS would have long ago ceased
to have any relevance, and should have been killed just like TOPS-20
regardless of any of it's technical advantages. Some would argue that it
doesn't have any relevance any more - but I believe that it's continued
existance, and the port to IA64 proves that it still does have some - even
if that does not mean that it will be the flagship product of the company.
Time will tell.
Fred Kleinsorge
>Mark Crispin wrote:
>> > Ironic that deemphasizing VMS has resulted in Digital going from #2
down to oblivion.
>>
>> So did the public attitudes of Digital employees, such as Fred
>> Kleinsorge's postings.
>
>For as much as Mr Kleinsorge hates me, I do not think that he can be made
>responsible for VMS's demise.
>
I don't hate you. I'm annoyed that with you and a few others there is no
room for anything positive.
>Sure, we may have liked to see the VMS engineers mount an internal revolt
and
>chain themselves to cover Curly's parking spot and make as much noise as
>possible to outline the stupidity of Compaq squandering Alpha and VMS. But
if
>these guys are told not to worry and that everything is being taken care
of,
>then the motivation to risk your job by rebelling against the corporation
just
>isn't there.
>
If chaining myself to a CEO's leg would make any difference, I would have.
The only leverage VMS has is that A) it is profitable, and B) it sells
Alphas and eventually IA64s.
Anything that is done to make either of these significantly less true,
reduces any future leverage VMS might have to resume the comeback that we
had been making pre-Q4 (i.e. when the hits of Compaq announcements, 9/11 and
the general economic decline all hit everyone).
We have to get past the Alpha decision, and the HP merger. The ONLY thing I
can do to try and assure a future for VMS is to make sure that I and the
people working for and with me execute to the IPF port roadmap, and TRY to
assure people as best I can to DON'T PANIC that things will be OK. EV7 will
be FANTASTIC. And when EV7 finally grows long in the tooth, we will be
shipping IA64 systems - some perhaps not as fast, but I'll wager a lot
cheaper.
>Also remember that those employees are only told about the WINs, not about
the
>LOSSES. They may not even be aware of cases when Compaq sales critters are
>pitching Windows to existing VMS sites.
Of course we aren't told when a salesman tries to sell Windows. How would
we get that visibility? What we can see is that the VMS sales trends are in
general following along lines that show a general downturn of the economy,
and then a return to growth. Our large customers and ISV's seem to be OK
with IA64. We seem to be getting new customers faster than we are losing
old ones.
BTW - we *do* see losses when it was a VMS account that was being worked by
one of our VMS field specialists... which is also where we see most of our
"win" data as well.
Mark Crispin
> Those are just the biggies that come to mind off hand. Feel free to add
> more.
7. Increasingly lackadasical approach to software quality. ADV FS on
Tru64 being an all-too-painful example. Ever discover what happens to the
reliability of your ADVFS filesystem once you cross a particular threshold
in size?
Mark Crispin
> one question: how many 10/20's did DEC/Digital sell and how many VMS
> systems?
> That should put things in perspective, wouldn't it.
A better measure is:
How many 10/20s were on the Internet, and how many VMS systems?
VMS did not replace the 10/20 on the Internet. UNIX did.
Mark Crispin
> > > Ironic that deemphasizing VMS has resulted in Digital going from #2 down to oblivion.
> > So did the public attitudes of Digital employees, such as Fred
> > Kleinsorge's postings.
> For as much as Mr Kleinsorge hates me, I do not think that he can be made
> responsible for VMS's demise.
Not directly; but by calling customers "morons" in public he demonstrates
remarkable indiscretion, particularly in doing so from a dec.com email
address.
Unfortunately, this same attitude problem was exhibited by Digital
employees in the 1980s. At DECUS symposia at the time, Digital employees
stated that "only poor programmers" need to edit files larger than 64K
(Rainbow editor's 64K file size limit), need to be able to splice in a
debugger on a process that got an execution fault, need something like
CTRL/T to monitor the PC of a running process, need other networking than
DECnet, etc.
In other words, anyone who wanted something that Digital didn't deliver
(and/or didn't want to deliver) was a "moron".
One by one, the DEC employees who didn't think that way left Digital; they
were made so thoroughly miserable that they couldn't stay.
Mark Crispin
> >So did the public attitudes of Digital employees, such as Fred
> >Kleinsorge's postings.
> Get a life. I didn't do anything.
Calling customers "morons" in public from a dec.com email address is
certainly doing something. It demonstrates an attitude problem.
> I'm sorry you are still pissed a couple
> decades later.
I'm not pissed. I'm thoroughly enjoying watching the demise of VMS and
VMS bigots crying into their beer.
> The simple truth is, regardless of
> the reasons for killing the DEC-20, it was meaningless to the eventual
> success and subsequent failure of DEC. DEC grew to #2 on the strength of
> VAX/VMS
I see that you are ignorant of history as well as being arrogant.
DEC was a success, and had become #2, long before VMS existed.
DEC was built on the success of the 8, the 10/20, and especially the 11.
The 18-bit systems, culminating in the 15, played a part too in the early
years; the other systems would not have happened if the 4, 7, and 9 had
flopped, and the tiger team on the 15 was paying for itself.
VMS was the beneficiary of DEC's earlier successes; but unlike the earlier
systems VMS failed to build upon those successes. Yes, Digital sold many
VAX/VMS systems after the demise of the 10/20 in 1983. But just 5 years
later, it was clear to everybody that Digital was dying. Its products
were widely perceived as overpriced and poor quality.
Any number of organizations within Digital tried to save the company, but
in the end to no avail because the underlying problem was never addressed.
JF Mezei
> VAX/VMS systems after the demise of the 10/20 in 1983. But just 5 years
> later, it was clear to everybody that Digital was dying. Its products
> were widely perceived as overpriced and poor quality.
Bet you that if DEC had kept the PDP-11, the PDP-11 would have remained
overpriced and DEC would have ignored its new competitors the same way it did
with VMS.
It is ironic that DEC's success was based on making computing affordable
compared to the big guys like IBM, but when someone else started to make their
machines "more" affordable, DEC refused to foloow suit because it wanted to be
like IBM.
Tom Linden
> -----Original Message-----
> From: JF Mezei [mailto:jfmezei...@videotron.ca]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 03, 2002 3:00 PM
> To: Info...@Mvb.Saic.Com
> Subject: Re: Predictions - just for the hell of it
>
>
Had they been like IBM they would still be around today.
Doc
wrote:
> yet-another-one-of-these-useless-threads.
>
> Not a single one of these inane dissertations that were spammed across
> groups that included alt.sys.pdp10 had any other objective than to waste
> peoples time, and continue some 20 year old argument that isn't really even
> interesting anymore, no matter how many peoples feelings were hurt that
> there pet architecture was tubed.
As a completely distanced bystander, I have to interject here. In an
earlier post you claimed that this "troll" would attract 300 posts.
Whether or not the 20-year argument is *productive* may be in question,
but you yourself have proved pretty conclusively that it's
*interesting*.
Doc
Mark Crispin
> Bet you that if DEC had kept the PDP-11, the PDP-11 would have remained
> overpriced and DEC would have ignored its new competitors the same way it did
> with VMS.
I wouldn't have wanted to take you up on that bet. I'd rather find some
sucker who'd bet the other way!
> It is ironic that DEC's success was based on making computing affordable
> compared to the big guys like IBM, but when someone else started to make their
> machines "more" affordable, DEC refused to foloow suit because it wanted to be
> like IBM.
Ironic yes, but also deeply sad.
Also, it was not DEC that "refused to follow suit". It was Digital. To
some of us, the difference is important! :-)
Art Beane
Until about 1983 or -4, 36-bit machines were critical to AI development.
DEC 10s and 20s had almost all the market until Xerox, Symbolics, and
LISP Machines LISP processors came on the market. Software on all of
these systems was based on list processing, where a list element
consisted of two pointers (the current and next objects). The 36 bit
machines were very powerful list processors because both pointers
(18-bit physical addresses) fit into a single machine word.
Unfortunately, real world problems grew beyond an 18-bit address space
about that same time. Rule based applications (like XCON) in languages
like OPS5 ran out of space and ports to 32-bit address spaces became
financially imperative/feasible. The early 32-bit LISPs were not very
fast, but the address space relief more than made up for speed. The
native OPS5 compiler for VMS solved the performance issues. Work pretty
much ended on 36-bit machines.
Since DEC was heavily invested in AI at the time, pressure (aka
"funding") was placed on several universities (Carnegie Mellon, MIT,
Edinburgh, etc.) to port languages and tools to VAX. The first
implementation of Common LISP was on VAX, and the ports of InterLISP and
PROLOG all moved to solve the performance issues.
TI even built a 32-bit LISP machine, the Explorer.
While LISP machines have gone the way of 36-bit machines, the AI problem
solving techniques have not. The OPS compiler was rewritten in C (OPS83)
and was still in use as late as mid-2000 (see
http://www.computer.org/tkde/tk2000/k0391abs.htm and
http://www.cs.uh.edu/Defenses/miminy.html). A java derivative,
CommonRules is currently available
(http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/commonrules) with XML extensions.
So, while the machines may not live on, the concepts certainly do, kind
of like a page out of James Burkes' Connections.
Art Beane (ebd 76-95)
Petris Technology, Inc.
(713) 403-8423
Peter da Silva
Bill Todd <bill...@metrocast.net> wrote:
>rather by engineering considerations: RISC seemed a better bet for future
>performance advances than CISC (over a dozen years later the success of IA32
>may call that assessment into some question, but it certainly seemed true
The 386 is not a classical CISC instruction set, and in fact there are
many design decisions in the 386 that are shared with the classic RISC
model... such as the load-store architecture (which makes a lot of high
performance optimizations easier because you only have one stall to
access memory per instruction... for most instructions), whereas the VAX
is almost the archetype of a CISC, with its extremely regular and human-
friendly instruction set that pretty much requires a just-in-time compiler
in hardware to convert the complex VAX instructions into a set of easily
pipelined and reordered load-store instructions.
Back when the Alpha project was started it was not at all clear that this
was possible without superhuman efforts... and it may well be argued that
it's still not possible without superhuman efforts: it just became cost
effective for intel and AMD to make that kind of effort. :->
JF Mezei
> Also, it was not DEC that "refused to follow suit". It was Digital. To
> some of us, the difference is important! :-)
Disagree. Digital's downfall did begin during Ken O's reign. Palmer just
accelerated it.
Bill Todd
"JF Mezei" <jfmezei...@videotron.ca> wrote in message
news:3CAB9683...@videotron.ca...
Not sure what you're trying to say above: the change to 'digital' occurred
long before Palmer appeared, but did roughly coincide with the change in
corporate attitude. So there's really nothing to disagree with Mark about
here.
- bill
Bill Todd
"Peter da Silva" <pe...@taronga.com> wrote in message
news:a8g459$1n1a$1...@citadel.in.taronga.com...
Without having gone into the detail you provided two paragraphs above, I
though your last paragraph above was pretty much what I'd said (though you
snipped part of it).
- bill
Peter da Silva
Fred Kleinsorge <klein...@star.zko.dec.com> wrote:
>Come on. I wasn't really doing the comparison. The moron tried to make a
>point that the decision to drop the 10/20 in favor of VAX/VMS was "suicide"
>for DEC. My point is that if it was, then it was the best decision we ever
>made. And if he is trying to draw Alpha comparisons, I can only hope it
>will be as successful as that decision was.
Unfortunately, I fully expect the IA64 to be as successful as the iAPX432.
Bill Todd
> Mark Crispin wrote:
> > VAX/VMS systems after the demise of the 10/20 in 1983. But just 5 years
> > later, it was clear to everybody that Digital was dying. Its products
> > were widely perceived as overpriced and poor quality.
>
>
> Bet you that if DEC had kept the PDP-11, the PDP-11 would have remained
> overpriced and DEC would have ignored its new competitors the same way it
did
> with VMS.
By the mid-'80s the 11 was no longer over-priced: you could buy a
('Micro-11'?) RT or RSX or RSTS F11 (even J11?) -based system for under
$10K, and given the superiority in hardware and software to a PC this wasn't
unreasonable (remember, a decent PC cost around $3K back then). It would be
a while yet before DEC learned how to make PC-comparable hardware at
PC-comparable prices (the Professional workstations were sort of betwixt and
between), but that's a different issue.
>
> It is ironic that DEC's success was based on making computing affordable
> compared to the big guys like IBM, but when someone else started to make
their
> machines "more" affordable, DEC refused to foloow suit because it wanted
to be
> like IBM.
DEC really did try, first with the PC efforts (which admittedly it attempted
to differentiate such that they wouldn't compete with higher-margin 'real'
11s) and then with the 'real' 11. But it hadn't yet learned how to produce
low-quality products at commodity prices (as its early efforts to produce
PC-compatibles demonstrated as well).
- bill
Bill Todd
"Mark Crispin" <m...@CAC.Washington.EDU> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.50.02040...@shiva0.cac.washington.edu...
...
> DEC was a success, and had become #2, long before VMS existed.
To forestall some obvious rejoinders:
The point at which I remember DEC becoming '#2' was when it passed HP in
total revenue, some time in the early '80s. Of course, HP had major revenue
from non-computer sources, so DEC arguably became the #2 *computer*
manufacturer at some earlier date.
- bill
Peter da Silva
I'm just addressing the myth that "because intel made the 386 run fast
anyone can make anything run fast". There's two problems with that: the
one I noted in my second paragraph and you had commented on, that Intel
isn't "anyone"; and the more important part that people still don't seem
to understand, which is that for all its obvious and horrid flaws the x86
architecture is better designed to accept '90s-era performance enhancements
than any classic CISC like the VAX or 68000.
Which is why Apple isn't shipping iMacs with 680x0s inside.
Peter Quodling
> "Main, Kerry" <Kerry...@Compaq.com> writes:
>
> > >>> As for HP buying into the Compaq professional services business,
> > it literally doesn't exist anymore. They (Compaq) have had massive
> > layoffs and are rejecting new business. I think the few that remain
> > in senior positions, are posturing for as comfortable a fall from
> > grace as possible.<<<
>
> > Wow, where did that fud come from?
>
> It came from some one who was with DEC 20 years ago. You know
> the Pak Generater? He wrote it.
Thanks for the vote of support, Reptile, but I didn't write the
Pakgenerator. That was some contract work, and one of the ugliest
kludges around. I was however, involved in LMF Development in VMS
Engineering for a couple of years. Those were some of the best years
of my working life, working with Visionaries and brilliant engineers
like Greg Robert, Bob Wyman, Marty Jack, Andy Goldstein, Fred
Kleinsorge and many many others.
The key point here, is however, that irrespective of history or the
future, Compaq (and HP) are now making some very stupid business
decisions.
They are rejecting large amounts of business, while trying to buy into
other customers. HP is trying to poach business of CPQ, which robbing
peter to pay paul. They are rejecting business and losing existing
business, not just in Australia, but in at least 4 different countries
that I am aware of (The post digital/compaq networks are
extensive...). Some of their business practices are running
dangerously close to litigation, and a number the people that have
left, have quit on ethical grounds, rather than being laid off.
A downturn is a downturn, but when frontlogs of 4-6 months of agreed
to work, are being cancelled, and staff are being laid off, all over.
And to top it off, the executive management are acting with less
decorum than my 10 year old son. There has been no clear plan put
forward by CPQ and HP Management, as to what lives and what dies, and
why. There is not even a strong plan.
Sadly, I believe that we are at the hands of a number of Executives
that believe that "size" is everything. I would much rather see a
number of $1-5 Bn entities, that understood their market niches and
served them well, than a $30bn plus (or less) monolith, that doesn't
even have a stated clear direction.
I am a Compaq Stockholder, and Its now not even worth the time or
effort to divest myself of them. I keep them as a reminder not to put
my trust in others.
Getting back to the original issue of prediction of compaq futures. I
tend to agree, that the Itaniums will continue to be a non event.
There is a point at sometime in the not to far distant future, where
CPQ/HP will need to drop all possibility of Continuing EV8/9, and go
with Itanium. I hope that the have the basic business sense to be sure
that Itanium can cut it, before throwing out the baby with the
bathwater.
Q
Tom Linden
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peter da Silva [mailto:pe...@taronga.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 03, 2002 4:43 PM
> To: Info...@Mvb.Saic.Com
> Subject: Re: Predictions - just for the hell of it
>
>
> In article <6HMq8.217264$2q2.19...@bin4.nnrp.aus1.giganews.com>,
> Bill Todd <bill...@metrocast.net> wrote:
> >Without having gone into the detail you provided two paragraphs above, I
> >though your last paragraph above was pretty much what I'd said
> (though you
> >snipped part of it).
>
> I'm just addressing the myth that "because intel made the 386 run fast
> anyone can make anything run fast". There's two problems with that: the
> one I noted in my second paragraph and you had commented on, that Intel
> isn't "anyone"; and the more important part that people still don't seem
> to understand, which is that for all its obvious and horrid flaws the x86
> architecture is better designed to accept '90s-era performance
> enhancements
> than any classic CISC like the VAX or 68000.
Rubbish. Your previous was also inaccurate
Ben Franchuk
What stands out to me was the fact the fact that DEC's PC did not come a
floppy disk format program. You had to Buy DEC's pre-formated disks.
The weird floppy too I bet cost lots of $$$.
--
Ben Franchuk - Dawn * 12/24 bit cpu *
www.jetnet.ab.ca/users/bfranchuk/index.html
JF Mezei
> to understand, which is that for all its obvious and horrid flaws the x86
> architecture is better designed to accept '90s-era performance enhancements
> than any classic CISC like the VAX or 68000.
In your opinion, how much longer can the 8086 move forwards and keep
respectable performance ?
Can its performance increase at about the same rate as the IA64 ?
Peter da Silva
JF Mezei <jfmezei...@videotron.ca> wrote:
>In your opinion, how much longer can the 8086 move forwards and keep
>respectable performance ?
As long as Intel wants it to. Especially since they're apparently going to
be using similar implementation techniques in the IA64 to convert its
baroque instruction set to something EV-8-ish, the exposed ISA of Intel
CPUs (possibly excluding Xscale) seems likely to become more or less
irrelevant.
But, basically, I see the only end to the x86 at this point a political
and marketing choice by Intel. Like CHomPaq and the Alpha.
>Can its performance increase at about the same rate as the IA64 ?
I'd give reasonable odds that it'll increase faster. Because that's where
the money is. Well, once the IA64 gets past the "awful to only kinda
sucking" stage.
One intriguing endgame is a common 64-bit core using EV-8 technology and
an internal EV-8-oid instruction set, with a front end that converts IA32
or x86-64 or IA64 into a common opcode stream for the CPU.
Alan Greig
<klein...@star.zko.dec.com> wrote:
>I'm just tired of 20 year old DS20 complaints. VAX/VMS propelled us to #2,
>not the 10/20.
As I'm a former TOPS-20 system manager and a current VMS one I'm not
sure why you feel more qualified to tell me I'm wrong. In 1980
virtually every self respecting computer science school ran some
flavour of ten or twenty and these systems were extremely popular.
Maybe half of the UK TOPS-10/20 sites moved to VAX/VMS and the rest
were lost mainly to Unix. Over the years the remainder have almost all
drifted away to non Digital/Compaq systems. How the hell can you say
that the period where DEC went from around number one in education to
near the bottom of the pile was the most successful?
Unlike some I like what VMS grew into. And yes I do still miss command
recognition and completion but why shouldn't I? And why should I have
to listen to you criticize me, a customer, for still asking for it.?
DCL is a functional command processor. But PCL/MIC enhanced EXEC was
functional and *sexy*. I don't think anyone would ever call DCL sexy.
DEC did little to smooth a TOPS-20 > VMS migration. Bell's note
indicates he seemed to think making COBOL,, FORTRAN and DBMS
compatible was enough.. If you didn't believe there was far more to an
OS than this you wouldn't likely be working in VMS engineering today.
Go have a look at an Arpanet HOSTS.TXT file from 1980 and look at the
domination of DEC machines. Something went wrong and there were many,
many factors, but to dismiss the reasoning put forward by PDP-10
admins of the time who watched it all at close quarters, just like
that, puts you in a bad light in my view.
"VMS Systems are not normally connected to the Internet"
- Digital UCX V1 documentation.
--
Alan
Alan Greig
>Fred,
>
>one question: how many 10/20's did DEC/Digital sell and how many VMS
>systems?
Most of the tens or twenties sold had a user population in the
thousands or tens of thousands. Most (2020 excepted) could handle 100
or more interactive users even in 1980. According to a 1982 NDA
presentation the Jupiter next generation DEC-20 was expected to
support up to 1000 users and was, in many ways according to the
presentation, a 72 bit machine .A typical VAX/VMS system of 1980
supported a much smaller user population and had trouble handling 20
users. The DEC-10/20 was DEC's mainframe range. VAX/VMS was the
supermini. Initially they did not usually compete in the same market.
There was room for both or room for compromise.
That's my recollections as someone who administered both VMS and
TOPS-20 side by side for years.
>That should put things in perspective, wouldn't it.
>OTOH I do understand Crispin's feelings and yes, VMS may go down the drain
>in a
>similar way as TOPS. That is the lesson: corporate policies have no relation
>to
>customer needs. So be it.
>
>Hans Vlems
>
>
>Fred Kleinsorge <klein...@star.zko.dec.com> wrote in message
>news:G7Jq8.1827$fL6....@news.cpqcorp.net...
>> Come on. I wasn't really doing the comparison. The moron tried to make a
>> point that the decision to drop the 10/20 in favor of VAX/VMS was
>"suicide"
>> for DEC. My point is that if it was, then it was the best decision we
>ever
>> made. And if he is trying to draw Alpha comparisons, I can only hope it
>> will be as successful as that decision was.
>>
>> Peter da Silva wrote in message ...
>> >In article <7bGq8.1813$fL6....@news.cpqcorp.net>,
>> >Fred Kleinsorge <klein...@star.zko.dec.com> wrote:
>> >>But let me assume that there was an intent to illuminate or teach us
>> >>something... To address the stupidity in the base note - if killing
>Alpha
>> >>leads to the same results that killing the DECsystem-20 did -- then lets
>> all
>> >>cheer. Technical rants and lost souls aside - the VAX/VMS era was the
>> most
>> >>successful time in the history of Digital Equipment.
>> >
>> >There are a number of differences between IA64 and the VAX. Technical
>> issues
>> >aside:
>> >
>> > Digital was 100% behind VAX/VMS: "all the wood behind one arrow",
>> > and VMS was a new clean OS design with a single core vision... I
>> > don't happen to care much for VMS but I do have to give it that.
>> >
>> > CHomPaq has 2 UNIX variants it's trying to merge, a 64 bit NT that
>> > it abandoned a few years back and now needs to resuscitate, and
>> > three legacy operating systems (and they just killed one of them).
>> >
>> > Plus they have IA32 and x86-64 competing with IA64, and no control
>> > over that. And then there's active Linux work on all four hardware
>> > platforms (ia32, x86-64, IA64, and Alpha). And it sometimes seems
>> > most of the innovative people left are messing around with iPaq and
>> > Itsy.
>> >
>> >--
>> >Rev. Peter da Silva, ULC. WWFD?
>> >
>> >"Be conservative in what you generate, and liberal in what you accept"
>> > -- Matthew 10:16 (l.trans)
>>
>>
>
--
Alan
Alan Greig
<klein...@star.zko.dec.com> wrote:
>Come on. I wasn't really doing the comparison. The moron tried to make a
>point that the decision to drop the 10/20 in favor of VAX/VMS was "suicide"
Fred, if you call me, a customer who has spent significant amounts on
VMS and is still pushing VMS internally, a moron from a Compaq mail
address one more time I *will* make an official complaint to Compaq.
It was the thinking behind the document that led to slow suicide not
any single one decision. Quite clearly the Bell logic set out in the
paper would, if applied today, result in the immediate termination of
VMS. Why can't you understand the point? Have you read it? Had Bell
understood that there were more TOPS-10/TOPS-20 *users* than VMS users
at the time it would have probably resulted even then in the
cancellation of VMS. Bell's argument is based, in large part, on CPU
sales but he forgot that a typical 10/20 of the time had a user
population in the thousands or even tens of thousands.
>for DEC. My point is that if it was, then it was the best decision we ever
>made. And if he is trying to draw Alpha comparisons, I can only hope it
And all the customers who were screwed by it were "morons". Fine. By
the exact same logic dropping VMS shortly will be "the best decision
HP ever made" and anyone who complains is just a moron.
Get it through your head. I am not saying VMS killed Digital.
Jan C. Vorbrüggen
> the 36-bit line was declared dying in 1983 IIRC. And as I was there for the
> period 1976 - 1987, I can assure you that DEC's decline *did* begin around
> the latter date (reasonable arguments could place it a bit earlier or later,
> but not much), even though DEC's financial decline lagged the internal
> upper-level management rot by several years.
"latter date" meaning 1987?
I found most interesting in the memo that in early 1979, it expected to have
by early 1982 an LSI (chip technology)-based VAX system board at under a
thousand bucks. That never happened, and later on the smaller systems were
overpriced compared to the competition.
Jan
Jan C. Vorbrüggen
> thousands or tens of thousands. Most (2020 excepted) could handle 100
> or more interactive users even in 1980. According to a 1982 NDA
> presentation the Jupiter next generation DEC-20 was expected to
> support up to 1000 users and was, in many ways according to the
> presentation, a 72 bit machine .A typical VAX/VMS system of 1980
> supported a much smaller user population and had trouble handling 20
> users.
That's not my recollection. In about 1981, we had a dual-processor KL-10
and a 780. Very soon, almost everybody in the 150-odd user population was
on the VAX. Part of the reason was that the KL-10 was supporting one
particular application (measuring and analysing bubble and streamer chamber
images) that severely taxed it. But the 780 certainly had no trouble at all
supporting more than 20 users.
Jan
Jan C. Vorbrüggen
> any single one decision. Quite clearly the Bell logic set out in the
> paper would, if applied today, result in the immediate termination of
> VMS. Why can't you understand the point? Have you read it? Had Bell
> understood that there were more TOPS-10/TOPS-20 *users* than VMS users
> at the time it would have probably resulted even then in the
> cancellation of VMS.
I don't see this as really a correct reading of the document. There are a
number of technical reasons given why the 10/20 would require significant
extensions to architecture and software to have compareable facilities to
VAX. The point that customers prefer to have a single architecture from
desktop to data center is still valid, IMO. It does point out that significant
effort would be required to ease transition from the other architectures to
VAX, and that at least the 11 should continue to occupy the lower end of the
spectrum. Also, there is the argument that following too many development
lines simultaneously might result in important ones not achieving critical
mass - I can't say whether that was true, but it definitely is a valid
concern.
There was a period when VAX/VMS with clusters really delivered what Bell
promised - apart from the low-cost, low-end systems that never materialized
(at the time the uVAX systems arrived, they were a joke, and the
workstation/"server" pricing model was, while clear in its intent, an insult
as well). I worked in a network of systems that could easily share data,
everybody could log in from any of the stations or dumb terminals to any of
the systems he had access to, it was easy to share compute resources via the
distributed batch system, and so on.
What really broke VMS in these environments (a physics institute and a
biological research institute) was abysmal price-performance and insufficient
absolute performance by about 1989, and no indication (public, at least) of a
clear way forward. By the time the Alpha arrived, Sun had taken over the
market.
Not that there wasn't arrogant behaviour on the part of VMS development, of
which the insistence not to put command completetion and other useful features
into DCL is only one part. But in general, the advantages of the VMS/cluster
approach by far outweighed these deficiencies (and they seem to have improved
in recent years in this regard).
Jan
Jan C. Vorbrüggen
> > anyone can make anything run fast". There's two problems with that: the
> > one I noted in my second paragraph and you had commented on, that Intel
> > isn't "anyone"; and the more important part that people still don't seem
> > to understand, which is that for all its obvious and horrid flaws the x86
> > architecture is better designed to accept '90s-era performance
> > enhancements than any classic CISC like the VAX or 68000.
>
> Rubbish. Your previous was also inaccurate
Rubbish yourself. Read John Mashey's post on the really relevant differences
between RISC and CISC, and you'll see that Peter's hit the mark. Or read the
paper from DEC on the NVAX/NVAX+ microarchitecture, and you'll also see that
the above is quite true.
On this count, BTW, S/370 is also mostly more of a RISC than a CISC, about in
the same league as x86.
Jan
jmfb...@aol.com
"Fred Kleinsorge" <klein...@star.zko.dec.com> wrote:
>zczc
>
>Arrrrrgh!!!n Whoever (Alan) the h*ll keeps writing these d*mned troll
>messages...
>
>
>PLEASE STOP IT! PLEASE STOP NOW!
>
>
>Do we HAVE to keep getting into these idiotic rehashing of hurt feelings
of
>TOPS-20 users from 20 years ago? Now we'll have 300 replies complaining
>about the lack of command completion.
>
>The original message in this topic was STUPID enough. What exactly was
the
>need to spam alt.sys.pdp10?
>
>STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP
<snip>
Since you're in ZKO you might read it and _LEARN_!!!!
Take a look at the problems the PDP10 group has had w.r.t.
bits and info lost, and work on closing the window.
/BAH
Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
jmfb...@aol.com
"Fred Kleinsorge" <klein...@star.zko.dec.com> wrote:
>Mark Crispin wrote in message ...
>>On Wed, 3 Apr 2002, JF Mezei wrote:
>>> > I'm just tired of 20 year old DS20 complaints. VAX/VMS propelled us
to
>#2,
>>> > not the 10/20.
down
>to oblivion.
>>
>>So did the public attitudes of Digital employees, such as Fred
>>Kleinsorge's postings.
>>
>
>Get a life. I didn't do anything. I'm sorry you are still pissed a
couple
>decades later. You have made it clear that VAX/VMS was the proximate
cause
>of the death of TOPS-20 - and thus have no interest or positive opinions
>about VMS. If there was *anything* I could say that would cause you to
buy
>a VMS system. I'd... well. whatever. The simple truth is, regardless of
>the reasons for killing the DEC-20, it was meaningless to the eventual
>success and subsequent failure of DEC. DEC grew to #2 on the strength of
>VAX/VMS, and then imploded for many reasons, each of which can create it's
>own debate. But DEC was growing so fast on the strength of VAX/VMS, that
>the DEC-20 became irrelevant.
You should take those rose colored glasses off. Who do you think
bought those VAX/VMS systems?
jmfb...@aol.com
"Fred Kleinsorge" <klein...@star.zko.dec.com> wrote:
>JF Mezei wrote in message <3CAB74BE...@videotron.ca>...
>>Mark Crispin wrote:
>>> > Ironic that deemphasizing VMS has resulted in Digital going from #2
>down to oblivion.
>>>
>>> So did the public attitudes of Digital employees, such as Fred
>>> Kleinsorge's postings.
>>
>>responsible for VMS's demise.
>>
>
>I don't hate you. I'm annoyed that with you and a few others there is no
>room for anything positive.
>
>>Sure, we may have liked to see the VMS engineers mount an internal revolt
>and
>>chain themselves to cover Curly's parking spot and make as much noise as
>>possible to outline the stupidity of Compaq squandering Alpha and VMS.
But
>if
>>these guys are told not to worry and that everything is being taken care
>of,
>>then the motivation to risk your job by rebelling against the corporation
>just
>>isn't there.
>>
>
>If chaining myself to a CEO's leg would make any difference, I would have.
>The only leverage VMS has is that A) it is profitable, and B) it sells
>Alphas and eventually IA64s.
Yes. However, customers who know how to read the tea leaves are
switching to a product line that they know will continue. And none
of that money is going to Compaq's VMS coffers.
You're losing your core customers. When you lose university
customers, you're not only losing today's revenue but the next
50 year's revenue because the kiddies are learning on your
competitor's soft/hardware platforms.
/BAH
<snip>
jmfb...@aol.com
"Hans Vlems" <hvl...@iae.nl> wrote:
>Fred,
>
>one question: how many 10/20's did DEC/Digital sell and how many VMS
>systems?
Nope. Because a customer had to buy five VAX/VMS systems to replace
the computing resources of a -20. It was _how much work_ a user
could get done. VMS was not a clean new OS. It's philosophy
was deeply rooted in the RSX thinking. Timesharing was anathema
to the philosophy.
/BAH
<snip>
jmfb...@aol.com
Alan Greig <a.g...@virgin.net> wrote:
>On Wed, 03 Apr 2002 21:01:40 GMT, "Hans Vlems" <hvl...@iae.nl> wrote:
>
>>Fred,
>>
>>one question: how many 10/20's did DEC/Digital sell and how many VMS
>>systems?
>
>Most of the tens or twenties sold had a user population in the
>thousands or tens of thousands. Most (2020 excepted) could handle 100
>or more interactive users even in 1980.
And a TOPS-10 SMP system could handle 500.
> ..According to a 1982 NDA
>presentation the Jupiter next generation DEC-20 was expected to
>support up to 1000 users and was, in many ways according to the
>presentation, a 72 bit machine .A typical VAX/VMS system of 1980
>supported a much smaller user population and had trouble handling 20
>users. The DEC-10/20 was DEC's mainframe range. VAX/VMS was the
>supermini. Initially they did not usually compete in the same market.
>There was room for both or room for compromise.
The difference in users serviced is due to the philosophies of the
OS. VMS was not a timesharing OS. Eventually, it learned but
it took a very long time.
>
>That's my recollections as someone who administered both VMS and
>TOPS-20 side by side for years.
<pins>
/BAH
Jan C. Vorbrüggen
Our dual KL-10 definitely couldn't - it started to break at around thirty or
so.
> The difference in users serviced is due to the philosophies of the
> OS. VMS was not a timesharing OS. Eventually, it learned but
> it took a very long time.
Come on, that's just nonsense. It was as time-sharing capable as TOPS-10
very early on. The batch and print system initially left some things to be
desired, and DSC was crap, but the base system was quite useable from day 1.
Certainly more useable than some Unix variants a decade later.
Jan
Jan C. Vorbrüggen
> the computing resources of a -20. It was _how much work_ a user
> could get done. VMS was not a clean new OS. It's philosophy
> was deeply rooted in the RSX thinking. Timesharing was anathema
> to the philosophy.
You clearly are living in a different universe.
Jan
Fred Kleinsorge
Alan Greig wrote in message ...
>On Wed, 3 Apr 2002 14:49:54 -0500, "Fred Kleinsorge"
><klein...@star.zko.dec.com> wrote:
>
>Fred, if you call me, a customer who has spent significant amounts on
>VMS and is still pushing VMS internally, a moron from a Compaq mail
>address one more time I *will* make an official complaint to Compaq.
>
Sorry to confuse the content with the sender. The problem will be solved, I
will filter any/all notes from you so that I don't see the content, and
won't offend the sender.
Fred Kleinsorge
>On Wed, 3 Apr 2002 11:28:45 -0500, Fred Kleinsorge
<klein...@star.zko.dec.com>
> wrote:
>> yet-another-one-of-these-useless-threads.
>>
>> Not a single one of these inane dissertations that were spammed across
>> groups that included alt.sys.pdp10 had any other objective than to waste
>> peoples time, and continue some 20 year old argument that isn't really
even
>> interesting anymore, no matter how many peoples feelings were hurt that
>> there pet architecture was tubed.
>
> As a completely distanced bystander, I have to interject here. In an
>earlier post you claimed that this "troll" would attract 300 posts.
>Whether or not the 20-year argument is *productive* may be in question,
>but you yourself have proved pretty conclusively that it's
>*interesting*.
It is like debating religion or politics. It can be interesting, but seldom
satisfying, and nobody ever changes their minds. It just wastes bandwidth.
If at *least* they would use "OT" in the title so it would be automatically
killed by my normal filter.
John Smith
"Jan C. Vorbrüggen" <jvorbr...@mediasec.de> wrote in message
news:3CAC31F5...@mediasec.de...
>
> What really broke VMS in these environments (a physics institute and a
> biological research institute) was abysmal price-performance and
insufficient
> absolute performance by about 1989, and no indication (public, at least)
of a
> clear way forward. By the time the Alpha arrived, Sun had taken over the
> market.
>
Same problem in the business community too.
Sun came along with a lower-priced platform that could often be brought in
'under-cover' because it didn't have to go so high up the purchasing
chain-of-command to get approval to sign the check..."It's only
$25,000..sign it at the department level..central purchasing/CFO doesn't
need to get involved." Remember at the time a comparable performance VAX
was $100-150K.
Upto and during that era, the VAX usually was under the control of the guys
with pocket protectors (no offense), who also were the ones who ran
ACCOUNTING every month to send out the chargebacks to each department. I was
one of the victims of such 'accounting' for quite some time, until I told my
boss that I was buying a VAX for my sub-department (fixed income research at
a major brokerage firm). I told him that I was either going to buy the VAX
as an entire system, or in pieces, charged on my credit card and expensed.
But I just as easily could have gone out and bought Sun and ported the code
too (Fortran with a bit of Macro32).
There were a whole bunch of factors involved in the decline of DEC, but the
biggest in my mind was as Jan states above - price/performance and absolute
performance. And these failings were the result of managerial decisions at
the highest levels. Not to mention the high cost of compiler licences and
CONDIST/CONOLD.
John Smith
machine was absolutely filled with memory to do it. Can't recall exactly how
much - I think 16Mb rings a bell.
And we were being charged something in the order of $25-40,000/month for the
privilege of using it
"Jan C. Vorbrüggen" <jvorbr...@mediasec.de> wrote in message
news:3CAC2ECC...@mediasec.de...
Arthur Krewat
>
> > And a TOPS-10 SMP system could handle 500.
>
> Our dual KL-10 definitely couldn't - it started to break at around thirty or
> so.
Then there was something seriously wrong with the system, the admins, or
the users themselves sucking up too many resources and not realizing it.
30 users on a 2020 w/512Kwords of core was a breeze. One such 2020 at
BOCES-LIRICS Dix Hills ran the business office database - 30 users pounding
the database at the same time was nothing for it to handle. That RP06
danced, boy!
ANOTHER CAVEAT: This was running TOPS-10 6.03A - not 7.x or TOPS-20
> > The difference in users serviced is due to the philosophies of the
> > OS. VMS was not a timesharing OS. Eventually, it learned but
> > it took a very long time.
>
> Come on, that's just nonsense. It was as time-sharing capable as TOPS-10
> very early on. The batch and print system initially left some things to be
> desired, and DSC was crap, but the base system was quite useable from day 1.
> Certainly more useable than some Unix variants a decade later.
But, having done VMS development on a 780 in '83, I remember having problems
just doing an EDIT/TECO when there were more than 20 people on the system.
5 minutes to load TECO is not usable in my opinion - of course, it was
memory starved :) And the users were all doing different things requiring
COBOL/FORTRAN - they were converting from an IBM 360 and used COBOL ruthlessly.
aak
Arthur Krewat
>
> Most of the tens or twenties sold had a user population in the
> thousands or tens of thousands. Most (2020 excepted) could handle 100
> or more interactive users even in 1980.
I take exception to that :)
BOCES-LIRICS Dix Hills had five 2020's and the LOGMAX was turned up
to 128.
Sometimes when a system went down for extended periods they would move
all the students from one machine over to the other. There were at least
40 users at a time per machine, so a max of 80 at once. However, there
were times when people were shuffled around and once in a while "RED" had
over 100 users at a time. They were mostly running BASIC, but still,
there were 100 people banging on their keyboards at once.
CAVEAT: The above users connected through a DCA that muxed all the
terminals into one card in the UNIBUS. They were NOT using DZ11's :)
I believe RED also had 512K words. ORANGE actually had 1M word.
aak
jmfb...@aol.com
Jan C. =?iso-8859-1?Q?Vorbr=FCggen?= <jvorbr...@mediasec.de> wrote:
>> And a TOPS-10 SMP system could handle 500.
>
>Our dual KL-10 definitely couldn't - it started to break at around thirty
or
>so.
Were you running master/slave? That would have been 6.03x monitors.
The 7.0n monitors were SMP. A dual KL could take a performance
hit if an app required a disk drive that was single ported.
>
>> The difference in users serviced is due to the philosophies of the
>> OS. VMS was not a timesharing OS. Eventually, it learned but
>> it took a very long time.
>
>Come on, that's just nonsense. It was as time-sharing capable as TOPS-10
>very early on.
Sorry but the performance sucked.
> .. The batch and print system initially left some things to be
>desired, and DSC was crap, but the base system was
>quite useable from day 1.
Useable is not the only criteria. Reasonable response time is
more important, IME, than usable.
>Certainly more useable than some Unix variants a decade later.
I know people who valued usability and, thus, loved VMS because
of it. They also were introduced to it when it ran on Alphas;
thus, they also got reasonable response. IOW, they got their
work done. VAX sucked. HINT: I never got my work done when
I had to use a VAX.
jmfb...@aol.com
It was also a task based system. There weren't any sharable hisegs
AFAIK.
jmfb...@aol.com
[emoticon shakes its head and holds it to await the pain to pass]
Boy does history repeat itself. We used to beat this fucking
attitude out of our developers.
Fred Kleinsorge
Look. There isn't anything I can say/do that will make a handful of people
who have become quite bitter, happy - heck the pdp10 people are still
"crying in their beer" (to coin a phrase from Mark) a couple decades later.
But there is a constant pitter patter of poison in here that sometimes is
hard to take. I admit to having said something perhaps inappropriate about
a *person*, when it was the content of what he said I had the problem with.
So I lack style points in debating. I can't fix that. But I can fix it in
the future by really-truly trying to ignore the poison debate, by turning
off the sound - even if that means potentially missing something of "real"
substance.
He knows how to contact me if he has a technical problem he wants help on...
which is the primary reason I read this conference anyway.
BTW - I don't know many "developers" who read these conferences... they
waste too much time. But I'm certainly glad I'm not someplace where it is
acceptable to be beaten ;-) Of course, I'm not quite sure who emoticon is.
Alan Winston - SSRL Admin Cmptg Mgr
>We were comfortably handling about 30-40 users on a 750 in 1982. But the
>machine was absolutely filled with memory to do it. Can't recall exactly how
>much - I think 16Mb rings a bell.
Not 16mb on a 750 in 1982, I don't think. ISTR it maxed out lower than that
with DEC memory, and it took high-density third-party memory for us to get our
750 up to 14mb in 1986. (In 1985, when I got there, we had a 780 for
scientific use and a 750 for administrative use; we did about 50 users on the
750, running Word-11. Rdb and Datatrieve were very slow, which made us very
much interested in an 8700 the next year.)
-- Alan
===============================================================================
Alan Winston --- WIN...@SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU
Disclaimer: I speak only for myself, not SLAC or SSRL Phone: 650/926-3056
Physical mail to: SSRL -- SLAC BIN 69, PO BOX 4349, STANFORD, CA 94309-0210
===============================================================================
jmfb...@aol.com
"Fred Kleinsorge" <klein...@star.zko.dec.com> wrote:
>jmfb...@aol.com wrote in message ...
>>In article <v1Zq8.1861$fL6....@news.cpqcorp.net>,
>> "Fred Kleinsorge" <klein...@star.zko.dec.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>Alan Greig wrote in message ...
>>>>On Wed, 3 Apr 2002 14:49:54 -0500, "Fred Kleinsorge"
>>>><klein...@star.zko.dec.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>Fred, if you call me, a customer who has spent significant amounts on
>>>>VMS and is still pushing VMS internally, a moron from a Compaq mail
>>>>address one more time I *will* make an official complaint to Compaq.
>>>>
>>>
>>>Sorry to confuse the content with the sender. The problem will be
solved,
>>I
>>>will filter any/all notes from you so that I don't see the content, and
>>>won't offend the sender.
>>
>>[emoticon shakes its head and holds it to await the pain to pass]
>>
>>Boy does history repeat itself. We used to beat this fucking
>>attitude out of our developers.
>>
>
>Look. There isn't anything I can say/do that will make a handful of
people
>who have become quite bitter, happy - heck the pdp10 people are still
>"crying in their beer" (to coin a phrase from Mark) a couple decades
later.
Look. The only reason I'm talking about this stuff is so that
people doing current development, maintenance and usage will
learn based on my experience. Do you think this is fucking
pleasant for me? Go find something out about people whose
initials are JMF and TW.
>But there is a constant pitter patter of poison in here that sometimes is
>hard to take.
They have been reminded of the past because it is happening again.
This thread could be predicted because of the fiasco that just
happened with Compaq and HP. Those of us who do know how the
OS biz works, can see that HP doesn't do it either.
> .. I admit to having said something perhaps inappropriate about
>a *person*, when it was the content of what he said I had the problem
with.
No. YOu said something very inappropriate to your CUSTOMER. Then,
when he objected, pointing out that he was an active customer,
you said something worse.
>So I lack style points in debating. I can't fix that. But I can fix it
in
>the future by really-truly trying to ignore the poison debate, by turning
>off the sound - even if that means potentially missing something of "real"
>substance.
>
>He knows how to contact me if he has a technical problem he wants help
on...
He's not going to trust your technical expertise. You've exhibited
none in this thread. Actually, you've exhibited the opposite.
OS experts can read between the lines.
>which is the primary reason I read this conference anyway.
>
>BTW - I don't know many "developers" who read these conferences... they
>waste too much time. But I'm certainly glad I'm not someplace where it is
>acceptable to be beaten ;-) Of course, I'm not quite sure who emoticon
is.
Beating was the least painful punishment ;-). If you got JMF and
TW pissed off, they could really screw you up.
If you were a den mother and they wanted to play, you might not
never be able to login on you stand alone machine.
Bill Todd
> > You're comparing apples and oranges. The VAX/VMS era started in 1978,
while
> > the 36-bit line was declared dying in 1983 IIRC. And as I was there for
the
> > period 1976 - 1987, I can assure you that DEC's decline *did* begin
around
> > the latter date (reasonable arguments could place it a bit earlier or
later,
> > but not much), even though DEC's financial decline lagged the internal
> > upper-level management rot by several years.
>
> "latter date" meaning 1987?
Sorry for the ambiguous antecedent: the 'latter date' referred to was 1983.
By 1987, the writing was on the wall for the rest of the world to see - as
evidenced by the fact that, unlike most of the rest of the market, the DEC
stock price never came close to recovering from the October '87 crash.
- bill
Don Chiasson
"Arthur Krewat" <kre...@bartek.dontspamme.net> wrote in message
news:3CAC5FD9...@bartek.dontspamme.net...
> Alan Greig wrote:
> >
> > Most of the tens or twenties sold had a user population in the
> > thousands or tens of thousands. Most (2020 excepted) could handle
100
> > or more interactive users even in 1980.
>
> I take exception to that :)
>
> BOCES-LIRICS Dix Hills had five 2020's and the LOGMAX was turned up
> to 128.
>
> Sometimes when a system went down for extended periods they would
> move all the students from one machine over to the other. There were
> at least 40 users at a time per machine, so a max of 80 at once.
> However, there were times when people were shuffled around and
> once in a while "RED" had over 100 users at a time. They were
> mostly running BASIC, but still, there were 100 people banging
> on their keyboards at once.
>
It is pointless to argue about number of users that could be
supported without knowing what the users are doing. I ran a
2060 with 512k words at a research lab of 200 people.
It was a Fortran shop. Typically we had 30 users logged in
at once, most of whom were editing data or source code or
doing short runs (one or two minutes of CPU),
plus one or perhaps two CPU intensive batch jobs
(one hour of CPU).
In this context, the system response was fully acceptable.
Compared to today's standards, CPU power was limited
and some jobs such as rasterizing a TeX file to a laser printer
could really slow the system. If everyone was doing simple data
entry with one program, the system could have supported *many*
users. Image processing or calculations involving large data arrays
could cripple response. In many cases, the critical thing to
users was response to terminal input rather than how much
CPU you got.
Too bad we can't run some benchmarks. :)
Don
e-mail: it's not not, it's hot.
Bill Todd
<jmfb...@aol.com> wrote in message news:a8hvue$bsn$9...@bob.news.rcn.net...
> In article <Bl_q8.1867$fL6....@news.cpqcorp.net>,
> "Fred Kleinsorge" <klein...@star.zko.dec.com> wrote:
...
> >He knows how to contact me if he has a technical problem he wants help
> on...
>
> He's not going to trust your technical expertise. You've exhibited
> none in this thread. Actually, you've exhibited the opposite.
> OS experts can read between the lines.
Not apparently in this case. Fred's technical expertise is just fine - it's
in the wider world that his analytical ability falls a bit short.
- bill
Tom Linden
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bill Todd [mailto:bill...@metrocast.net]
> Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2002 9:32 AM
> To: Info...@Mvb.Saic.Com
> Subject: Re: IA64 is not the VAX
>
>
>
> <jmfb...@aol.com> wrote in message news:a8hvue$bsn$9...@bob.news.rcn.net...
> > In article <Bl_q8.1867$fL6....@news.cpqcorp.net>,
> > "Fred Kleinsorge" <klein...@star.zko.dec.com> wrote:
>
> ....
>
> > >He knows how to contact me if he has a technical problem he wants help
> > on...
> >
> > He's not going to trust your technical expertise. You've exhibited
> > none in this thread. Actually, you've exhibited the opposite.
> > OS experts can read between the lines.
>
> Not apparently in this case. Fred's technical expertise is just
> fine - it's
> in the wider world that his analytical ability falls a bit short.
Maybe he slices his tee shot, too.
>
> - bill
>
>
>
Fred Kleinsorge
>
>Look. The only reason I'm talking about this stuff is so that
>people doing current development, maintenance and usage will
>learn based on my experience. Do you think this is fucking
>pleasant for me? Go find something out about people whose
>initials are JMF and TW.
>
I assume that you are JMF (jmf bah civ - whatever that decodes to). TW =
Tiger Woods? But I'm not quite sure what it is I'm supposed to be looking
for. I don't want to make anything unpleasant for you. I have no idea who
you are.
>>But there is a constant pitter patter of poison in here that sometimes is
>>hard to take.
>
>They have been reminded of the past because it is happening again.
>This thread could be predicted because of the fiasco that just
>happened with Compaq and HP. Those of us who do know how the
>OS biz works, can see that HP doesn't do it either.
>
I'm really not sure what you are saying. You could predict that someone
would start this thread? What was the fiasco with Compaq and HP? The proxy
fight with Walter? What does "HP doesn't do it either" mean? What aren't
they doing? Or should they be doing? I'm not quite sure what the "OS biz"
is, or how it works. I work for someone writing OS code, but the only going
concerns I know of that might be called "OS biz" are Windows, and Linux (and
Linux sort-of changes the meaning of "biz") - all the rest
one-way-or-the-other are developed to sell hardware.
>
>> .. I admit to having said something perhaps inappropriate about
>>a *person*, when it was the content of what he said I had the problem
>with.
>
>No. YOu said something very inappropriate to your CUSTOMER. Then,
>when he objected, pointing out that he was an active customer,
>you said something worse.
>
Really? I am simply not going to be drawn into any more of these. That's
all
>>So I lack style points in debating. I can't fix that. But I can fix it
>in
>>the future by really-truly trying to ignore the poison debate, by turning
>>off the sound - even if that means potentially missing something of "real"
>>substance.
>>
>>He knows how to contact me if he has a technical problem he wants help
>on...
>
>He's not going to trust your technical expertise.
That's OK. There are others who he can turn to. But he is always welcome -
as a customer there is almost nothing I won't do to help him sell and
continue to use VMS - as long as it's legal, it's in my power, and the
company says it's OK. I have no problem with answering a technical problem,
or forwarding a need to someone else. Just no interest in debate involving
why/how DEC went toes up. I can't uncancel Jupiter. I can't uncancel
Alpha.
You've exhibited
>none in this thread.
This thread had no technical content.
Actually, you've exhibited the opposite.
>OS experts can read between the lines.
>
I defer to you. I don't claim to be an OS expert. I think OS's have become
far too complex for anyone to claim to be an "OS expert", except in specific
areas, or as a "generalist" for an entire OS. Don't ask me a cluster
question, or how the lock manager works. But I can tell you how parts of
the /IO system work, all of the graphics system, a lot of the bootpath and
the console work, how devices are configured, how the low-level guts of
Galaxy works, and a smattering of a bunch of other corners where I am
more-or-less an expert. And in general I can tell you how most things work
on the OS I work on, as long as we don't go below the 1st or 2nd level
details - without some research. I do belong to SIGOPS - does that make you
feel better?
>
>>which is the primary reason I read this conference anyway.
>>
>>BTW - I don't know many "developers" who read these conferences... they
>>waste too much time. But I'm certainly glad I'm not someplace where it is
>>acceptable to be beaten ;-) Of course, I'm not quite sure who emoticon
>is.
>
>Beating was the least painful punishment ;-). If you got JMF and
>TW pissed off, they could really screw you up.
>
Really? I really am not into physical punishment these days. I don't know
who JMF is (hmm, This implies it's not you) or TW is (unless it's Tiger
Woods - who I don't want pissed at me) - and I don't want either of you
pissed at me. Let me know what I can do to apologize to you.
>If you were a den mother and they wanted to play, you might not
>never be able to login on you stand alone machine.
>
>/BAH
>
My daughter isn't in the Girl Scouts. And when my standalone machine gets
hacked, I'll be the first one to tell the FBI that I have no idea who JMF,
TW or BAH are. I'm not looking to somehow get you pissed off. If you think
that somehow HP, Compaq, Mike or Carly are doing something to repeat
history - please let them know. Because I didn't cancel the DEC20, or
Alpha, or cuase or propose the Compaq merger with DEC or with HP. I just
write code, and try to keep the wolves at bay.
Fred Kleinsorge
Only when I swing too "hard", my hands don't rotate quickly enough and I
come through with an open clubface - and a big bannana result of course. My
problem tends to be the straight push, or hard pull - I think it's mostly my
setup. But I will occasionally hit a really bad hook with my driver.
Wait! My analytical ability is OK - my swing just sucks ;-)
Rob Young
> jmfb...@aol.com wrote in message ...
>>
>>Look. The only reason I'm talking about this stuff is so that
>>people doing current development, maintenance and usage will
>>learn based on my experience. Do you think this is fucking
>>pleasant for me? Go find something out about people whose
>>initials are JMF and TW.
>>
>
JMF "bah" - bah humbug? bah seems to be a placeholder... his
tagline often says "subtract 104 for email" , i.e. - "civ"
Rob
Ed Fortmiller
you...@encompasserve.org (Rob Young) wrote:
http://www.inwap.com/pdp10/images/TWJMF.jpg
JMF is on the left and TW on the right.
--
Ed Fortmiller | RUBBI...@ultranet.com | Hudson MA
*
* To avoid getting a lot of SPAM junk mail, I have altered my REPLY-TO
* address. PLEASE remove the leading "RUBBISH" from my REPLY address.
Fred Kleinsorge
Ed Fortmiller wrote in message ...
>> >
>> > I assume that you are JMF (jmf bah civ - whatever that decodes to). TW
=
>>
>> JMF "bah" - bah humbug? bah seems to be a placeholder... his
>> tagline often says "subtract 104 for email" , i.e. - "civ"
>>
>> Rob
>
>http://www.inwap.com/pdp10/images/TWJMF.jpg
>
>JMF is on the left and TW on the right.
>
That doesn't really help me much, other than to say they like 10/20's - and
that neither one is Tiger Woods ;-)
Ed Fortmiller
"Fred Kleinsorge" <klein...@star.zko.dec.com> wrote:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=egf+group:alt.sys.pdp10&hl=en&selm=wwn1
jombds.fsf%40atlas.cfht.hawaii.edu&rnum=2
Doc.Cypher
On Thu, 04 Apr 02, jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
<snip>
>You're losing your core customers. When you lose university
>customers, you're not only losing today's revenue but the next
>50 year's revenue because the kiddies are learning on your
>competitor's soft/hardware platforms.
To be honest, I've lost count of the number of times this point has been
put across, that is, that without recent graduates with VMS experience
there will be nobody with a favourable attitude towards the OS in a
decision-making position in 10-20 years.
As I run a shell service on VMS I get a fair cross-section of the more
computer-savvy public applying for accounts. More than half assume that VMS
is some obscure UN*X variant and think DCL is some proprietary UN*X shell.
That just shows what sort of market awareness we're dealing with. To say
there is no problem is like refusing to accept you're in a desert because
you've got your head buried in the sand. Compaq sure as hell haven't
addressed this problem, and HP don't seem likely to when they haven't even
mentioned VMS during all the merger hulabaloo. As a link to it was posted I
re-read the open letter to Curly, I find no fault with it and think Bill is
right, these were issues that should have been handled by the CEO. That
they weren't speaks volumes to me about the senior management attitude
towards VMS. Words from obviously pro-VMS people like Fred can't change
this, and I for one hope that whatever the outcome of the merger the owners
of VMS get a serious management shakeup in the near future.
Anyway, all this negativity gets to people, myself included. To be honest,
I sometimes wonder why I even bother to continue reading the c.o.v. The
technical posts that are relevant to me are few and far between, and the
political ruminations are predominantly negative. On days where there are
over a hundred posts and I have 1/2 hour to read the group I start to
wonder why I bother. I don't believe VMS is dead yet, but the nay-sayers
are determined to portray it as such, and the yea-sayers have this
infurating belief that there is no serious problem. Because of this I find
it difficult to see either side as credible. If someone can find the
positive/negative switch for the newsgroup please toggle it to another
position.
Doc.
- --
The bigger the humbug, the better people will like it.
~ Phineas Taylor Barnum.
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Rob Brooks
> In article <Bl_q8.1867$fL6....@news.cpqcorp.net>,
>>So I lack style points in debating. I can't fix that. But I can fix it in
>>the future by really-truly trying to ignore the poison debate, by turning
>>off the sound - even if that means potentially missing something of "real"
>>substance.
>>
>>He knows how to contact me if he has a technical problem he wants help
> on...
>
> He's not going to trust your technical expertise. You've exhibited
> none in this thread. Actually, you've exhibited the opposite.
Fred doesn't need anyone to defend him, but before anyone questions
his technical ability, it might be useful to know how many patents you own.
We're engineers; we have little-to-no say in how the corporation
markets/promotes/sells VMS. We innovate when given the chance (e.g Galaxy),
and wish we had more folks to take on some projects that always fall below
the line (larger DCL buffer size, etc...). It may surprise the audience,but
we're as passionate about VMS as the customer base; many of the new engineers
in the last couple of years have been former customers and posters to
comp.os.vms.
We read the complaints that are posted here by the hour; in a 200-someodd
group, I'm sure that you could find folks here that agree with much of the
complaining. We want to see VMS succeed; our heads are not in the sand,
but you give us way too much credit if you think we can alter the company's
perception of VMS. If VMS is profitable, we'll be around. It's (probably)
that simple.
--
Rob Brooks VMS Engineering -- I/O Exec Group brooks!cuebid.zko.dec.com
Fred Kleinsorge
Ed Fortmiller wrote in message ...
>http://groups.google.com/groups?q=egf+group:alt.sys.pdp10&hl=en&selm=wwn1
>jombds.fsf%40atlas.cfht.hawaii.edu&rnum=2
>
OK. Here's my guess. BAH = Barb Huizenga who appears to be the Significant
Other of
JMF = Jim Flemming - which would explain "jmfbah", and TW = Tony Wachs.
Don't know 'em. But of course, I never was a TOPS-20 guy ("slightly" - but
only just - too young) I came into DEC in the field as a Sr SW Specialist in
1979 from the PDP-11/RSX route - and never knew the 10/20 developers.
So now I know the names behind the initials. I still don't know 'em, and
have no reason to want any of them to be pissed or to threaten to be pissed
about me or anything else. Hey, I have friends who used to do 10/20
support. I think command completion is neat. Undelete is cool. Hidden
10/20 meanings in Firesign Theater skits was really cool. Great technology,
and home to fanatics - just like the VMS fanatics, or heck - even the
Solaris fanatics - each of whom think they invented the coolest technology.
Interesting list. I know Dawn Banks, and John Hallyburton - both ex-VMS
developers and both recently worked with my wife (John is now back in
VMS)... plus I know the names of a few others, and/or have had some
professional interactions with a couple others.
Main, Kerry
Re: focus on youth ..
>>> To be honest, I've lost count of the number of times this point has
been put across, that is, that without recent graduates with VMS
experience there will be nobody with a favourable attitude towards the
OS in a decision-making position in 10-20 years.<<<
Well, not that something that is going to change the world, but at an
Ambassador meeting about a years ago, one of the new Ambassadors
introduced was 23.
:-)
Also, something to keep in mind-
"New college hires and interns to join critical engineering projects"
http://www.compaq.com/inFORM/issues/issue32/human-int-29-b.html
And wrt to future application availability, while Java is certainly not
without issues, since Java applications run fine on OpenVMS, check out
future programmer trends at:
http://news.com.com/2009-1001-868454.html?tag=dd.ne.dtx.nl-sty.0
"That trend is reflected in academia as well. At the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, the computer science department in 1997
replaced Microsoft's C++ with Java as the primary software language that
students are required to learn. This spring, the University of
California at Berkeley offered 25 Java courses and only seven on
Microsoft languages.
"In my mind, Java is rapidly going to displace all the languages,
particularly C++," MIT associate professor Daniel Jackson said, noting
that undergraduate students are increasingly teaching themselves some
Java even before attending his classes. In two years, the College Board
will switch from C++ to Java for the computer science advanced placement
tests that high school students take to get credit for college-level
courses."
Regards,
Kerry Main
Senior Consultant
Compaq Canada Corp.
Professional Services
Voice: 613-592-4660
Fax : 819-772-7036
Email: Kerry...@Compaq.com
Fred Kleinsorge
>In article <a8hvue$bsn$9...@bob.news.rcn.net>, jmfb...@aol.com writes:
>> In article <Bl_q8.1867$fL6....@news.cpqcorp.net>,
>>>So I lack style points in debating. I can't fix that. But I can fix it
in
>>>the future by really-truly trying to ignore the poison debate, by turning
>>>off the sound - even if that means potentially missing something of
"real"
>>>substance.
>>>
>>>He knows how to contact me if he has a technical problem he wants help
>> on...
>>
>> He's not going to trust your technical expertise. You've exhibited
>> none in this thread. Actually, you've exhibited the opposite.
>
>Fred doesn't need anyone to defend him, but before anyone questions
>his technical ability, it might be useful to know how many patents you own.
>
Thanks Rob. BAH, JMF, TW, and Mark Crispen all are probably fine,
interesting, smart people. It looks like at least 3 of them were TOPS-20
developers. I'm impressed. I don't want to poo-poo the technical
capabilities of the 36-bit folks. After all, they had 4 more bits that we
did for a long time.
I am at fault for not simply ignoring a troll message designed to do exactly
this type of flame. Bad me.
I'm not a big fan of SW patents, I think the patent and copyright systems
need to be dragged out of the 18th century. But companies find them
required and useful, and I have 2 US patents issued so far. But I find it
hard to brag when I know someone who just had > 30 issue in the space of a
year for HW.
Tom Linden
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Fred Kleinsorge [mailto:klein...@star.zko.dec.com]
> Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2002 12:04 PM
> To: Info...@Mvb.Saic.Com
> Subject: Re: IA64 is not the VAX
>
>
> Rob Brooks wrote in message ...
> >In article <a8hvue$bsn$9...@bob.news.rcn.net>, jmfb...@aol.com writes:
> >> In article <Bl_q8.1867$fL6....@news.cpqcorp.net>,
> >>>So I lack style points in debating. I can't fix that. But I
> can fix it
> in
> >>>the future by really-truly trying to ignore the poison debate,
> by turning
> >>>off the sound - even if that means potentially missing something of
> "real"
> >>>substance.
> >>>
> >>>He knows how to contact me if he has a technical problem he wants help
> >> on...
> >>
> >> He's not going to trust your technical expertise. You've exhibited
> >> none in this thread. Actually, you've exhibited the opposite.
> >
> >Fred doesn't need anyone to defend him, but before anyone questions
> >his technical ability, it might be useful to know how many
> patents you own.
> >
>
> Thanks Rob. BAH, JMF, TW, and Mark Crispen all are probably fine,
> interesting, smart people. It looks like at least 3 of them were TOPS-20
> developers. I'm impressed. I don't want to poo-poo the technical
> capabilities of the 36-bit folks. After all, they had 4 more bits that we
> did for a long time.
So did Multics.
Mark Crispin
> I assume that you are JMF (jmf bah civ - whatever that decodes to). TW =
> Tiger Woods? But I'm not quite sure what it is I'm supposed to be looking
> for. I don't want to make anything unpleasant for you. I have no idea who
> you are.
The appalling ignorance of youth. And arrogant (judging by his habit of
calling customers "morons") youth at that.
I suggest that he takes the time to find out who JMF, TW, and BAH were.
He might learn something about his employer's history before he get his
pink slip, and in turn learn some life lessons that have eluded him up to
now.
Hint: JMF, TW, and BAH were not TOPS-20 developers. At least that wasn't
their primary responsibility, nor why they were remembered, nor why they
were respected as gods (yes, BAH, you too!).
-- Mark --
http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.