Meeting of the not-so-secret 6 regarding Solx86
Peter Lawler
Just thought I'd post *my* feelings about the meeting with the Sun
folks. This is initial reaction, and to those who know me will
understand that it'll be a little disjointed and over the place.
Apologies. Clarifications will be made in later posts if needs be.
First off, those attending (spelling mistakes based on aural
pronounciation):
Graham Lovell - Director, Solaris Mktg
Dianne Olden - VP LIfecycle services
Tim Marsland - DIstinguished Engineer Solaris
Terri Walker - admin
Anil Gadre - GM Solaris
Herb Hinstorff - core solaris mktg
Andy Ingram - VP Mktg Solaris
Phil Brown
Alan Duboff
John Weekly
Sascha Ferly
Bruce Riddle
Chris Baker
Peter Lawler
Bruce sent me a copy of the presentation which was made, I'll leave
him to put it in the files section of yahooligans
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/solarisonintel/files) for reference. I
won't post it, because they guys in the states are now off to lunch to
discuss matters, including the important one mentioned later here, and
I think it'd be unfair of me to post it, and maybe have him receive
flak, without his presence online. ALso, without the benefit of being
able to see faces (or the whiteboard, for that matter) a *lot* of what
I'm going to say is mere perception, and will need either ridicule or
backing up from the others :-)
Sun were highly receptive to our comments, to the degree where most of
the time was spent agreeing with each other - quite frustrating when
trying to eastablish solutions, but I suppose only to be expected as
it was only one meeting, and of only a couple of hours. I think they
are even suprised at the level of support Solaris (not just x86) has
in the 'community'.
I finally had an answer to a burning question - *some* VP's (no names)
@ Sun have Windows on their desktops! "To do presentations and stuff"
I think was the excuse. Full points to (I think it was) Phil to say
"Well, this presentation is pure Solx86" (five seconds silence
followed). I'm sure they could hear my grin over the 'phone.
There seems to be no core Solaris concern in Sun. By that, I mean that
as ou may know each department is a seperate business unit. Thus,
value adding within the company as a whole is very difficult. Whilst
the 'mindshare' arguments were well received (ie, "Sun don't make
iPlanet for x86, it's not a serious attempt by Sun for an OS) I don't
think that they understood the message that by releasing product will
increase mindshare - HOWEVER, the concept of EA/unsupported or limited
pay-for-support was received with a reasonable tone.
Although on the end of a telephone, the general feeling that I got
that some form of community involvement, whereby the users actually
get to take the lead somewhat, would be highly welcome. Of course,
this means more work for us, but in a world with Linux being useful
for it's open source nature, this is certainly a step forward for
Solaris. I have to admit I was stunned by the fact that although Sun
have, for quite some time, blamed x86 support as a big cost, they had
no figures for x86 specific kernel problems - most problems lie in
driver areas, which the community or IHV's could/should handle. Same
arguments made for iPlanet and other Sun technologies, and whilst
there was understanding on Sun's behalf, they seemed unwilling to
ensure that their seperate business departments worked together
(ironic, isn't it, that the ONE product that supposedly does this, ie
SunONE, doesn't).
Late last week, the Reps were presented (by persons anonymous) with a
model for an official User Group for Solaris x86, whereby more of the
specific x86 load was taken off Sun. I am, for the same reason as
given for Bruce's presentation, am unwilling to release it here before
it has been looked over by the six and Sun during lunch (which I was
virtually promised they'd do - I'm not there, so cannot verify). Phil
had his go over not being able to assist in driver development due to
the nature of community feedback to Sun at this point in time - and he
seemed to receive a warm reception.
On the whole, I suppose it could have gone a lot worse. We still
received the 'it's not dead!' line, we got the point across about the
Cobalt announcement confusing the market place (and, I might add, some
pleaded [as is their right] to remove the Penguin from the Sun home
page to help stave off market place confusion over the entire Solaris
product line :-)
Talk about AMD support, maybe making Cobalt boxes appear on the
Solaris HCL, comments such as 'that's a good idea' lead me to believe
Sun a little more than I did last Friday. Maybe it's the revolutionary
in me, but I still believe actions speak louder than words. Yes, Sun
met with the community. No, they didn't say "we got it wrong, we're
sorry". Yes, they did say that Solaris x86 has been poorly marketed.
Yes, they did say that they do want to keep it in the marketplace. And
yes, the six understands financial pressures, but made several
suggestions as to how they can start making money out of Solaris 9
NOW, as an EA product even. However, we've got to remember to
feedback, and Sun needs to work out *how* we can feedback in the most
productive, cost effective and profitable for everyone.
For anyone who's been following this saga for more than two years,
it's obvious that the change won't happen overnight - but yes, they do
want *another* change, but have done so many in the past they're
unsure of which way to move (understandable business decsision). They
seem very interested in how we can help out, or maybe even lead. An of
course, as we are representing *you*, we were also interested in the
same thing! Something that I still find interesting - name me *ONE*
other proprietary OS vendor who, at least publically, is this eager
for community participation in their operating system.
As I'm not there for the informal chats (as we all know, that's where
real business is done), I can't really make a closing statement on
outcomes of the meeting. However, I'm quite hopeful that something
will come of it and soon (I'll refrain from using the term 'positive'
until I hear the outcome of the informal chats).
Needless to say, at the end of the formal meeting before lunch, Sun
were told that without something positive to come back to the group/s
with after the meeting, there'd be a *lot* of *very* pissed off
people.
I suppose I could go on, but as the meeting started at 5AM my time, I
got zip sleep last night, and it's now 7:45AM, things are getting more
disjointed, and I've got a 1PM client meeting to still prepare for.
I'll leave it to the other five, and maybe as well the Sun folk who
drop by here, to add their comments, and start different threads.
Hopefully, there'll be a few more meetings like this in future.
Pete.
Philo T. Farnsworth
From Peter Lawler
> I finally had an answer to a burning question - *some* VP's (no names)
> @ Sun have Windows on their desktops! "To do presentations and stuff"
> I think was the excuse. Full points to (I think it was) Phil to say
> "Well, this presentation is pure Solx86" (five seconds silence
> followed). I'm sure they could hear my grin over the 'phone.
I can assure you that 90+% of Sun's VP and Directors, sales, field and
marketing people use Windows almost exclusively. They may have Solaris
desktops for some applications (some internal applications only run on
Solaris/SPARC) but they use Windows for presentations, budgeting and
planning. Judging from the X-Mailer: header Netscape inserts they even
use Windows for all their E-Mail. Netscape is the prefered E-Mail
client at Sun now a days, although I see a lot of Outlook E-Mail.
Sun's infrastructure is Solaris (SunIT got rid of the mainframes
years ago) and most of engineering runs on Solaris but the entire
management structure runs on M$ Office using Excel, Project, Word and
most especially PowerPoint. Yes Scott McNealy may despise Powerpoint,
but I have seen lots of Powerpoint presentations at Sun. Sun's sales,
marketing and executives LOVE their Powerpoint presentations just as
much as any other company's sales, marketing and executives do.
I have personally seen the massive mail storms on internal Sun mailing
lists caused by someone getting infected with the latest virus. Then
the flame wars over Sun people using Windows, inevitably followed with
the reply that they need the ``productivity tools'' that only Windows
provides. I have seen the offices at iPlanet and noticed every one of
them has a PC in it running Windows along with a Sun desktop, but
judging by the X-Mailer headers, Windows is used for all the E-Mail.
I know the management group under Mark Himelstein, VP for the Solaris
Operating Environment (who reports to Anil Gadre the GM for Solaris)
and I can assure you that his management group does everything in
Windows exclusively, from project planning to presentations no Solaris
applications are permitted. Try giving a presentation to this group
from slides you printed from Solaris and look at the expressions (!)
(this is very sad as Solaris OE is the very core of Solaris).
I spent 10+ years at Sun working on SunOS 4 and Solaris 2 (before
being laid off) and it has only gotten worse over the years. The more
people Sun hires who are Windows trained (and who refuse to use any
thing but what they once learned) the more Windows is used. Even some
of the new Solaris development engineers prefer not to use Solaris!
I have seen a lot of PC's bought for Solaris x86 development that sit
in peoples offices and have components that have no Solaris device
drivers (and they are not developing any either)
Most of Sun's engineers use Solaris of course, some even use StarOffice.
But they tend to feel surrounded, even inside Sun, by a Windows world.
Even the managers (often ex-engineers) who prefer Solaris, are forced
to use Windows to deal with the management structure (Directors and
VP's) who use M$ Project and Excel.
I saw a job opening recently for a software developer and one of the
very specific requirements along with MFC and C++ was Powerpoint!
Personally I prefer to avoid Windows and my few attempts to use Word
has only given me a throbbing headache (but I am also unemployed....)
do...@85.usenet.us.com
: I can assure you that 90+% of Sun's VP and Directors, sales, field and
: marketing people use Windows almost exclusively. They may have Solaris
: desktops for some applications (some internal applications only run on
: Solaris/SPARC) but they use Windows for presentations, budgeting and
: planning. Judging from the X-Mailer: header Netscape inserts they even
: use Windows for all their E-Mail. Netscape is the prefered E-Mail
: client at Sun now a days, although I see a lot of Outlook E-Mail.
How closely did you look at those headers?
I ran MS Outlook on my Sun box for quite a while. It was the only way I
knew how to deal with the attachments that I would then open in StarOffice.
I also ran MSIE on that same Sparcstation.
--
---
Clarence A Dold - do...@email.rahul.net
- Pope Valley (Napa County) CA.
do...@85.usenet.us.com
: I can assure you that 90+% of Sun's VP and Directors, sales, field and
: marketing people use Windows almost exclusively. They may have Solaris
: desktops for some applications (some internal applications only run on
: Solaris/SPARC) but they use Windows for presentations, budgeting and
: planning. Judging from the X-Mailer: header Netscape inserts they even
: use Windows for all their E-Mail. Netscape is the prefered E-Mail
: client at Sun now a days, although I see a lot of Outlook E-Mail.
How closely did you look at those headers?
Rich Teer
> I can assure you that 90+% of Sun's VP and Directors, sales, field and
> marketing people use Windows almost exclusively. They may have Solaris
That (if it's true) is fscking disgusting. Whatever happened to Sun on
Sun and the training course that Sun newbies get (I forget the name)?
> Sun's infrastructure is Solaris (SunIT got rid of the mainframes
> years ago) and most of engineering runs on Solaris but the entire
> management structure runs on M$ Office using Excel, Project, Word and
> most especially PowerPoint. Yes Scott McNealy may despise Powerpoint,
> but I have seen lots of Powerpoint presentations at Sun. Sun's sales,
> marketing and executives LOVE their Powerpoint presentations just as
> much as any other company's sales, marketing and executives do.
The difference is that other execs have an excuse for being clueless.
For Sun execs NOT to be using StarOffice or some other SPARC based
application is, to me, totally unacceptable.
> people Sun hires who are Windows trained (and who refuse to use any
> thing but what they once learned) the more Windows is used. Even some
Then they should be fired - make an example of them.
> Most of Sun's engineers use Solaris of course, some even use StarOffice.
> But they tend to feel surrounded, even inside Sun, by a Windows world.
> Even the managers (often ex-engineers) who prefer Solaris, are forced
> to use Windows to deal with the management structure (Directors and
> VP's) who use M$ Project and Excel.
Maybe that'll explain the constant product slips: stupid managers
having to reboot their PeeCees every 5 minutes.
--
Rich Teer
President,
Rite Online Inc.
Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-online.net
Benny
>
> On Fri, 15 Feb 2002, Philo T. Farnsworth wrote:
>
> > I can assure you that 90+% of Sun's VP and Directors, sales, field and
> > marketing people use Windows almost exclusively. They may have Solaris
>
> That (if it's true) is fscking disgusting. Whatever happened to Sun on
> Sun and the training course that Sun newbies get (I forget the name)?
Rumour is that people MAY get fired if they do.
But in reality there are strict rules, laptops are the only places where
you should be able to find Windows, reason is that many customers DEMAND
their presentation in M$ formats. Sales people sometimes have no choice,
I guess the same goes for Sun VPs and Directors. Personally, apart from
some TrueType fonts, I do not use ANYTHING from M$ and I have not done
so in a long long time. Have never touched Win2000, WinME nor WinXP.
> > Most of Sun's engineers use Solaris of course, some even use StarOffice.
StarOffice formats are the DEFAULT actually. Everyone uses it.
Ussually I do not bother with the make-up and just use 'vi'.
> > But they tend to feel surrounded, even inside Sun, by a Windows world.
:-) Surrounded by the virii that tend to infect our email boxes yeah.
But up to now none of them has gotten further than to tell me "it loves
me".
Which is okay as long as it doesnt touch me.
> > Even the managers (often ex-engineers) who prefer Solaris, are forced
> > to use Windows to deal with the management structure (Directors and
> > VP's) who use M$ Project and Excel.
Where do you get this stuff ?
Have you got any idea how offensive this is to Sun people because it
just is not true ?
Benny
Jim Mauro
> I can assure you that 90+% of Sun's VP and Directors, sales, field and
> marketing people use Windows almost exclusively.
This is NOT true. Some folks use Windows on laptops, but the
90% number is a gross exageration.
The "entire management structure" does NOT run on M$ office.
StarOffice is the tool of choice for word processing, spreadsheets
and presentations.
Yes, there are some inside Sun that use the M$ tools instead of
Star, but that is not the majority.
I understand falling under the RIF leaves you with some bad
feelings towards Sun. I've been down that road (not at Sun,
but Digital in 1990), and it's human nature. But the information
you posted in the message is not accurate. The use of M$
technology inside Sun is not nearly as wide-spread as you
indicate here.
/jim
Mike Jones
group.com>, ri...@rite-group.com says...
> On Fri, 15 Feb 2002, Philo T. Farnsworth wrote:
> > I can assure you that 90+% of Sun's VP and Directors, sales, field and
> > marketing people use Windows almost exclusively. They may have Solaris
> That (if it's true) is fscking disgusting. Whatever happened to Sun on
> Sun and the training course that Sun newbies get (I forget the name)?
It's not true, at least for the sales and field people. Up until
November, I worked at the Sun office in Albany, NY, and everybody in the
place - including the district sales and SE managers - had Suns on their
desktops. The laptop situation was different; most folks ran Windows on
their laptops, but a lot of the SEs either ran Linux or had them set up
to dual boot (which I did). Presentations were done in StarOffice, which
meant for most of us writing them on our desktops (in Solaris) and
downloading a copy to the laptop just to take with us to the meeting.
Every other field office I was in (Burlington MA, NYC, King of Prussia
PA, Columbus OH off the top of my head) had the same situation. In fact,
all of the larger offices had been moving to all-SunRay infrastructure. I
don't know where "Philo" is getting his information, but based on this I
think he's either making it up completely or extrapolating wildly from a
couple of isolated situations.
> > Sun's infrastructure is Solaris (SunIT got rid of the mainframes
> > years ago) and most of engineering runs on Solaris but the entire
> > management structure runs on M$ Office using Excel, Project, Word and
> > most especially PowerPoint. Yes Scott McNealy may despise Powerpoint,
> > but I have seen lots of Powerpoint presentations at Sun. Sun's sales,
> > marketing and executives LOVE their Powerpoint presentations just as
> > much as any other company's sales, marketing and executives do.
> The difference is that other execs have an excuse for being clueless.
> For Sun execs NOT to be using StarOffice or some other SPARC based
> application is, to me, totally unacceptable.
And it doesn't happen. All the executive presentations for about the past
year or so have been in StarOffice. Before that, there was a mish-mosh of
Powerpoint, PDF (probably generated from PowerPoint), and Applix. I'm
talking about things like presentations at significant events like
product launches and big customer shindings.
> > people Sun hires who are Windows trained (and who refuse to use any
> > thing but what they once learned) the more Windows is used. Even some
> Then they should be fired - make an example of them.
> > Most of Sun's engineers use Solaris of course, some even use StarOffice.
> > But they tend to feel surrounded, even inside Sun, by a Windows world.
> > Even the managers (often ex-engineers) who prefer Solaris, are forced
> > to use Windows to deal with the management structure (Directors and
> > VP's) who use M$ Project and Excel.
In my 3-1/2 years at Sun, I never saw anyone (and I regularly worked with
people up to the regional sales and SE manager level) *forced* to use
Windows for anything.
--
Mike Jones
I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of some weird religious
cult?
-- Rita Rudner
Robert Mullenax
If this is true..and I have no reason to doubt you..it's enough to make
me puke AND not mind going to Linux just on principal. What kind
of *&^% idiots have these people become at Sun? This company is indeed
doomed, what a bunch of morons. They don't DESERVE to be caretakers
of Solaris. Time to sell your Sun stock if it ever peaks above 10
again. Hell, whatever the faults of Linux zealots at least they recognize
Windows as the piece of steaming crap that it is. These Sun managers
don't know their a%^ from a hole in the ground.
Philip Brown
>...
>The "entire management structure" does NOT run on M$ office.
>
>StarOffice is the tool of choice for word processing, spreadsheets
>and presentations.
And they run StarOffice on top of ms-windows, for laptops.
Why? I have no frickin idea. It's just too bizzare.
--
[Trim the no-bots from my address to reply to me by email!]
[ Do NOT email-CC me on posts. Pick one or the other.]
S.1618 http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d105:SN01618:@@@D
http://www.spamlaws.com/state/ca1.html
Mike Jones
bots.com says...
> On Sat, 16 Feb 2002 02:14:14 GMT, james...@verizon.net wrote:
> >...
> >The "entire management structure" does NOT run on M$ office.
> >
> >StarOffice is the tool of choice for word processing, spreadsheets
> >and presentations.
>
> And they run StarOffice on top of ms-windows, for laptops.
> Why? I have no frickin idea. It's just too bizzare.
Why? Isn't it obvious? When I was at Sun, I wrote all my presentations on
my (SPARC/Solaris) desktop and dumped them to my laptop when I needed to
take them on the road.
Rich Teer
> This is NOT true. Some folks use Windows on laptops, but the
> 90% number is a gross exageration.
>
> The "entire management structure" does NOT run on M$ office.
>
> StarOffice is the tool of choice for word processing, spreadsheets
> and presentations.
>
> Yes, there are some inside Sun that use the M$ tools instead of
> Star, but that is not the majority.
>
> I understand falling under the RIF leaves you with some bad
> feelings towards Sun. I've been down that road (not at Sun,
> but Digital in 1990), and it's human nature. But the information
> you posted in the message is not accurate. The use of M$
> technology inside Sun is not nearly as wide-spread as you
> indicate here.
Jim (and others): thanks for the quick correction. It DID
sound a little too incredulous to be true.
Now, if Sun would sort out this Lintel* stuff (i.e., drop it),
we can get on with life. :-)
* For general purpose servers: I have no beef with the Cobalt stuff.
Thomas Dehn
"Philo T. Farnsworth" <not...@nospam.com> wrote:
> I sure hope that *some* comment is your guess and no one lied to you.
>
> From Peter Lawler
> > I finally had an answer to a burning question - *some* VP's (no names)
> > @ Sun have Windows on their desktops! "To do presentations and stuff"
> > I think was the excuse. Full points to (I think it was) Phil to say
> > "Well, this presentation is pure Solx86" (five seconds silence
> > followed). I'm sure they could hear my grin over the 'phone.
>
> I can assure you that 90+% of Sun's VP and Directors, sales, field and
> marketing people use Windows almost exclusively.
Only in your dreams.
They use Solaris on Sun Rays as desktops.
(laptops are a different story - Solaris x86 has
only little support for x86 laptops).
Thomas
Casper H.S. Dik
>On Fri, 15 Feb 2002, Philo T. Farnsworth wrote:
>> I can assure you that 90+% of Sun's VP and Directors, sales, field and
>> marketing people use Windows almost exclusively. They may have Solaris
>That (if it's true) is fscking disgusting. Whatever happened to Sun on
>Sun and the training course that Sun newbies get (I forget the name)?
It's not as bad as some people make it out to be; certainly, all desktops
are SPARC or more and more Sun RAYs. (Wouldn't be surprised if the
latter reached the 50% mark now). What people use in the form of
MS-Windows systems (much to my dislike), is generally on laptops or
private home PCs.
Casper
--
Expressed in this posting are my opinions. They are in no way related
to opinions held by my employer, Sun Microsystems.
Statements on Sun products included here are not gospel and may
be fiction rather than truth.
Benny
> me puke AND not mind going to Linux just on principal. What kind
> of *&^% idiots have these people become at Sun? This company is indeed
> doomed, what a bunch of morons. They don't DESERVE to be caretakers
> of Solaris. Time to sell your Sun stock if it ever peaks above 10
> again. Hell, whatever the faults of Linux zealots at least they recognize
> Windows as the piece of steaming crap that it is. These Sun managers
> don't know their a%^ from a hole in the ground.
You truly do need to get a life Robert.
Stefaan A Eeckels
Rich Teer <ri...@rite-group.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Feb 2002, Philo T. Farnsworth wrote:
>
> > I can assure you that 90+% of Sun's VP and Directors, sales, field and
> > marketing people use Windows almost exclusively. They may have Solaris
>
> That (if it's true) is fscking disgusting. Whatever happened to Sun on
> Sun and the training course that Sun newbies get (I forget the name)?
I've never worked at Sun, but at the last Sun seminar I attended
in Brussels I noticed how _all_ the presentations were done
using StarOffice, even though most of the laptops seemed to
be running Windows (I saw one rebooting between presentation :-).
--
Stefaan
--
"There's nothing wrong with Java - well actually there is, but we won't
intrude on private grief here - except that it is pretty presumptuous
and demanding, and shows clear signs of fixation at the anal stage: it
doesn't just throw exceptions, it throws tantrums." --Steve Blinkhorn
Chris Morgan
> On Fri, 15 Feb 2002, Philo T. Farnsworth wrote:
>
> > I can assure you that 90+% of Sun's VP and Directors, sales, field and
> > marketing people use Windows almost exclusively. They may have Solaris
>
> That (if it's true) is fscking disgusting. Whatever happened to Sun on
> Sun and the training course that Sun newbies get (I forget the name)?
The Sun field engineer I know has an iBook. The cool thing about it is
that it's Unix under the covers and hooks nicely into Sun's Unix
infrastructure no matter where he is. I think the above is an inflated
claim.
--
Chris Morgan <cm at mihalis.net> http://www.mihalis.net
Temp sig. - Enquire within
Chris Morgan
> If this is true..and I have no reason to doubt you..it's enough to make
> me puke AND not mind going to Linux just on principal. What kind
> of *&^% idiots have these people become at Sun? This company is indeed
> doomed, what a bunch of morons. They don't DESERVE to be caretakers
> of Solaris. Time to sell your Sun stock if it ever peaks above 10
> again. Hell, whatever the faults of Linux zealots at least they recognize
> Windows as the piece of steaming crap that it is. These Sun managers
> don't know their a%^ from a hole in the ground.
If it was really the gospel truth, I'd agree with you, but I don't
think it is. There probably should be some Windows machines at Sun,
after Excel IS the best spreadsheet for a lot of people, and Word is
good for ... well, reading Word documents. The guys I talk to are
quite fond of their SunRay environment - your environment is wherever
your smart card is. The application I work on is being tested on that
setup at my office and might start spreading out within our "PC"
network as a cost reducing exercise, and might even go out to
customers. The only hassle is the required private network, but of
course that's easy when you rebuild whole floors for just sunray.
Casper H.S. Dik
>If it was really the gospel truth, I'd agree with you, but I don't
>think it is. There probably should be some Windows machines at Sun,
>after Excel IS the best spreadsheet for a lot of people, and Word is
>good for ... well, reading Word documents. The guys I talk to are
>quite fond of their SunRay environment - your environment is wherever
>your smart card is. The application I work on is being tested on that
>setup at my office and might start spreading out within our "PC"
>network as a cost reducing exercise, and might even go out to
>customers. The only hassle is the required private network, but of
>course that's easy when you rebuild whole floors for just sunray.
Or when you have all your networks configured in a single patchroom;
an extra interface in the Sun RAY server; and move some of the switches
over to that net and start plugging.
If your infrastructure is slightly better than spit and duct tape, an
extra Sun RAY net should be no trouble at all.
Robert Mullenax
Ahh...the old get a life insult, can't you be more creative?
Looks like the original poster was making it up..and I retract what I said..
which since I was mad about unrelated stuff, shouldn't have been written
in the first place.
Robert Mullenax
> (laptops are a different story - Solaris x86 has
> only little support for x86 laptops).
..and whose fault is that???
Robert Mullenax
...and I apologize for the unneeded rant.
John D Groenveld
John D Groenveld
>The laptop manufacturers. Who else?
Sun, of course. For years we've been telling them to standardize internally
on one laptop vendor (Toshiba, IBM, Fujitsu) and only invest in supporting
that laptop.
We've been ignored and result is SE's running around giving presentations
about standardizing on a single Sun solution across the enterprise in
Powerpoint.
Disheartening.
John
groe...@acm.org
Benny
Funny though how you swallowed that nonsense post without any kind of
scepticism, while you jump on all the favourable news on Sun or Solaris
that ever gets posted on here ?
Benny
Benny
Even if these laptops would run Solaris x86 than they still would not be
able to use those buggy M$ applications customer expect to get their
pricelist and presentations from.
Im starting to wonder what OS you run on your laptop ?
Please enlighten me, Robert.
Benny
John D Groenveld
>Even if these laptops would run Solaris x86 than they still would not be
>able to use those buggy M$ applications customer expect to get their
>pricelist and presentations from.
I'm no salesman, but that seems like the perfect place in a sales call
with a CTO for say a big Enterprise server to
* trash Microsoft
* talk about Sun solutions across the enterprise
* hand out a StarOffice CD.
"Hey, buy our big iron server and will throw in a service contract for SO
for free."
John
groe...@acm.org
Thomas Dehn
I do not have any opinion
about fault with respect to this issue.
Thomas
Seth Hettich
Jim Mauro <james...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> I can assure you that 90+% of Sun's VP and Directors, sales, field and
>> marketing people use Windows almost exclusively.
>
>This is NOT true. Some folks use Windows on laptops, but the
>90% number is a gross exageration.
>
>The "entire management structure" does NOT run on M$ office.
I agree. I was in ENS in '97 and '98. I recall internal web servers
being cut off from the network when ppt files were found on them. We
(ENS) were on the lookout for windows users, and we shut them down.
-Seth
Bruce Adler
"Goran Larsson" <h...@invalid.invalid> wrote in message news:Grn7J...@approve.se...
> In article <93819821.02021...@posting.google.com>,
> Robert Mullenax <robertm...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > "Thomas Dehn" <thomas...@arcor.de> wrote in message
> > news:<3c6e0...@news.arcor-ip.de>...
> > > (laptops are a different story - Solaris x86 has
> > > only little support for x86 laptops).
>
>
> The laptop manufacturers. Who else?
>
Two Sun managers whose initials are P. C. and B. G. I was in the room
when the decision was announced and heard all their lame reasons.
Benny
What IS MS Project ?
Bruce Adler
"John D Groenveld" <groe...@cse.psu.edu> wrote in message news:a4mghg$au0$1...@ewok.cse.psu.edu...
> In article <Grn7J...@approve.se>, Goran Larsson <h...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> >The laptop manufacturers. Who else?
> Sun, of course. For years we've been telling them to standardize internally
> on one laptop vendor (Toshiba, IBM, Fujitsu) and only invest in supporting
> that laptop.
I made the same suggestion about 30 seconds after I first learned that
Sun's x86 managers decided to drop all laptop support (which I think
happened just before or just after 2.6 shipped). It's the obvious
response to, "we can't afford to support 5-10 new laptops per year from
5-10 different vendors". The answer I got to, "why not just pick 1 laptop
reference platform, 1 desktop reference platform, and 1 server reference
platform", was so full of circular and specious reasoning that it seemed
to me that the only way to make any sense out of most of their decisions
was that Sun's x86 managers just wanted to eliminate as many projects
as possible without completely killing off Solaris x86. Which projects they
chose to eliminate had more to do with the phase of the moon than any sort
of cost-benefit analysis (unless they were doing cost-benefit analysis
on their own paychecks: how do I collect the most pay for the least work?).
So for example, they killed off all the laptop related projects immediately
but didn't dump MCA bus support for another year or two (even though MCA
was already dead and laptops sales were increasing exponentially). If
it had been up to me, I would have much rather have done a "cardbus"
driver than a driver for IBM's "corvette" HBA.
[It was also probably significant that, at that time, none of Sun's x86
managers owned or used x86 laptops (or even x86 desktops or servers for
that matter; back then every x86 manager had a very expensive SPARC
workstation with a 21" CRT on his desk and all the fileservers were old
SPARC servers). OTOH, I suspect that even if Sun had been giving x86
laptops to the x86 managers, that they still would have found reasons for
dropping laptop support, because they just didn't get it].
Bruce Adler
"John D Groenveld" <groe...@cse.psu.edu> wrote in message news:a4migi$b1h$1...@ewok.cse.psu.edu...
Actually, my suggestion was even better: "Buy our $2 million server and
we'll sell you (at the MSRP of about $1500), brand new Dell x86 laptops, and
we'll throw in for free on every laptop a pre-installed ISV Developer's
Suite of x86 software consisting of Solaris x86, Java, Solaris Workshop,
Teamware, StarOffice, etc".
Of course, that's just too sweet of a deal compared to the (non-laptop)
ISV developer SPARC hardware deals they've offered in the past. Sun's SPARC
marketing, sales, and even development managers are all just too
anti-Solaris-x86 to ever get behind an deal like that even though the
standard retail markup on the x86 laptops is probably a lot more than
their net profits on their Ultra 5/10 and/or Blade sales (there's no
hardware development costs on resales of x86 laptops). ("Which would you
rather take ... the 400MHz Ultra 5 behind door 1 ... or the 1Ghz x86
laptop behind door 2 ... or the Solaris x86 poke in the eye with a sharp
stick behind door 3?" ... "I'll take the poke, Monty")
Robert Mullenax
There is a very easy answer to that Benny (I already said I was sorry
for what I said)..when you get poor service from a company as I did
when Sun unceremoniously dumped Solaris Intel after not 6 months
before reiterating their support for it. I made business decisions
based on their assurances they were supporting it. That's the way
it is, when businesses provide poor service you stop giving them the
benefit of the doubt. If you could put down your biases against
Solaris Intel for a minute and think about it from a customers perspective
you could understand the anger in the Solaris Intel community. There are
many of us that used it in our businesses. If you can find where Sun
ever said that they intended Solaris Intel only as toy I'd like to see
it.
That's why I am not likely to give Sun the benefit of the doubt where
I certainly would have 6 months ago. If Sun would have never came out
with that statement on www.sun.com (and had not told our sys admin)
they they were fully behind Solaris Intel, if they had just continued to treat
it as an orphan we would not have gone the route we did. We were worried
about it's future but Sun was so reassuring that we figured it was a sure
bet. We all can see now that the money for Solaris Intel is now going
into Linux and their new server line..so obviously this was not some
snap decision.
Robert Mullenax
Obviously the post was a big exaggeration..and I am sorry for going how wild
on it.
Robert Mullenax
..the reason nobody can run Solaris on a laptop is that Sun
refused to support any laptops. It's Sun's fault that no manager can
run Solaris on their laptops. I don't own a laptop, I don't like them.
The one I will be getting at work will have Linux on it.
It would have been not that big of a deal for Sun to have supported
one or two laptops.
John D Groenveld
Rich Teer
> I agree. I was in ENS in '97 and '98. I recall internal web servers
> being cut off from the network when ppt files were found on them. We
> (ENS) were on the lookout for windows users, and we shut them down.
Now THAT'S the kind of talk I like to hear!
--
Rich Teer
President,
Rite Online Inc.
Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-online.net
Paul Eggert
> when Sun unceremoniously dumped Solaris Intel after not 6 months
> before reiterating their support for it. I made business decisions
> based on their assurances they were supporting it.
Sun takes 6 months? They're slow. Microsoft can do the same thing in
under 2.5 months:
* July 21, 1998: Microsoft announces the Chromeffects SDK for
high-performance interactive media content.
<http://xml.coverpages.org/msChromepr9807.html>
* September 2, 1998: Steve Ballmer of Microsoft, in a keynote address
at a Seybold conference, demonstrated to publishers that Microsoft was
taking their needs seriously by showing off Microsoft's Chromeffects
technology. Ballmer said it would be included in Windows 98 computers
shipping in the fall.
<http://www.zdnet.com/eweek/news/0831/02eball.html>
* November 13, 1998: Microsoft "postpones" Chromeffects. But Rob
Bennett, a Microsoft marketing manager says "Chromeffects is definitely
something we are committed to and want to deliver."
<http://content.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19981113S0018>
Guess what Microsoft ended up doing with Chromeffects after
"postponing" it?
Philip Brown
>In article <slrna6rpsj....@bolthole.com>, phi...@bolthole.no-
>bots.com says...
>> ...
>> And they run StarOffice on top of ms-windows, for laptops.
>> Why? I have no frickin idea. It's just too bizzare.
>
>Why? Isn't it obvious? When I was at Sun, I wrote all my presentations on
>my (SPARC/Solaris) desktop and dumped them to my laptop when I needed to
>take them on the road.
Why didnt you run SOLARIS X86 ON YOUR LAPTOP???? That's the not so
"obvious" part.
Since this was hardware for your job, you presumably could have gotten sun
to buy a solx86 compatible one, if the one you had didnt happen to be
compatible.
--
[Trim the no-bots from my address to reply to me by email!]
[ Do NOT email-CC me on posts. Pick one or the other.]
S.1618 http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d105:SN01618:@@@D
http://www.spamlaws.com/state/ca1.html
Philip Brown
>> I can assure you that 90+% of Sun's VP and Directors, sales, field and
>> marketing people use Windows almost exclusively.
>
>They use Solaris on Sun Rays as desktops.
>(laptops are a different story - Solaris x86 has only little support for
> x86 laptops).
it has enough support that over **50** laptops will definately run it, and
I'm sure there are more out there that havnet been discovered.
With that many to chose from, you'd think that the Sun VP's could pick
ONE of them to run Solaris x86 for their own use.
http://www.bolthole.com/solaris/x86-laptops.html
Philip Brown
>...
>If it was really the gospel truth, I'd agree with you, but I don't
>think it is. There probably should be some Windows machines at Sun,
>after Excel IS the best spreadsheet for a lot of people,
no, it's not.
It's just a spreadsheet program, and like most of the M$-office programs,
most people dont even tough 90% of its capabilities.
The StarOffice spreadsheet program is just as good for the average user,
including your average VP.
Benny
> for what I said)..when you get poor service from a company as I did
> when Sun unceremoniously dumped Solaris Intel after not 6 months
> before reiterating their support for it. I made business decisions
> based on their assurances they were supporting it. That's the way
> it is, when businesses provide poor service you stop giving them the
> benefit of the doubt. If you could put down your biases against
> Solaris Intel for a minute and think about it from a customers perspective
> you could understand the anger in the Solaris Intel community. There are
> many of us that used it in our businesses. If you can find where Sun
> ever said that they intended Solaris Intel only as toy I'd like to see
> it.
Actually I can relate how that must feel. Sun has however NOT cut down
support on Solaris x86 which makes it a viable OS for server use for at
least the following years to come. And one never knows what will happen
during those long years.
When you are done stamping on the ground and trying to hostage this
newsgroup let me know.
In the meantime obvously your postings can not be taken seriously since
they are written in anger.
regards,
Benny
Bob Palowoda
> On 16 Feb 2002, Seth Hettich wrote:
>
> > I agree. I was in ENS in '97 and '98. I recall internal web servers
> > being cut off from the network when ppt files were found on them. We
> > (ENS) were on the lookout for windows users, and we shut them down.
>
> Now THAT'S the kind of talk I like to hear!
Kind of a silly policy considering you can save .ppt files from
Star/OpenOffice. I've done ppt files for presentations and
never been cut off by ENS.
---Bob
Bob Palowoda
> Rich Teer <ri...@rite-group.com> writes:
>
> >On Fri, 15 Feb 2002, Philo T. Farnsworth wrote:
>
> >> I can assure you that 90+% of Sun's VP and Directors, sales, field and
>
> >That (if it's true) is fscking disgusting. Whatever happened to Sun on
> >Sun and the training course that Sun newbies get (I forget the name)?
>
> It's not as bad as some people make it out to be; certainly, all desktops
> are SPARC or more and more Sun RAYs. (Wouldn't be surprised if the
> latter reached the 50% mark now). What people use in the form of
> MS-Windows systems (much to my dislike), is generally on laptops or
> private home PCs.
>
> Casper
Not too much to dislike these days. Most people I know have enough
systems at home to run all the OS's. It's rather common to have
multiple systems at home these days. Personally I have 11 systems
at home and don't think it's abnormal (yes they are power on right now).
Even if I am all screwed up I figure others might have 1/3 the systems
available at home so enough to run a number of different OS's.
It's difficult to know just what people really use at home these
day's considering the glut of computer hardware on the market.
---Bob
Thomas Dehn
"Benny" <kley...@pi.be> wrote:
> > There is a very easy answer to that Benny (I already said I was sorry
> > for what I said)..when you get poor service from a company as I did
> > when Sun unceremoniously dumped Solaris Intel after not 6 months
> > before reiterating their support for it. I made business decisions
> > based on their assurances they were supporting it. That's the way
> > it is, when businesses provide poor service you stop giving them the
> > benefit of the doubt. If you could put down your biases against
> > Solaris Intel for a minute and think
> > about it from a customers perspective
> > you could understand the anger in
> > the Solaris Intel community. There are
> > many of us that used it in our businesses. If you can find where Sun
> > ever said that they intended Solaris Intel only as toy I'd like to see
> > it.
>
> Actually I can relate how that must feel. Sun has however NOT cut down
> support on Solaris x86 which makes it a viable OS for server use for at
> least the following years to come. And one never knows what will happen
> during those long years.
You are on the wrong track. Not providing Solaris 9
for x86 for the time being is cutting down on support, as
many new Solaris features will not be provided for
the x86 platform, and some customers have based
business decisions on new features which were
expected to become available with Solaris 9. It also means
that new x86 hardware available two years from now
probably will not be supported.
Sun's customers frequently
have projects which run over several years, develop software
which then is deployed for many years.
Did you ever migrate a large installation to a different
platform?
Thomas
Anthony Mandic
>
> Casper H.S. Dik <Caspe...@Sun.COM> wrote:
>
> > What people use in the form of MS-Windows systems (much to my dislike),
> > is generally on laptops or private home PCs.
Ah, yes. Those pesky PC at home users. Tom Watson would be
mortified. Someone ought to get Hollywood off its butt and
start that world-wide wiring job they've been meaning to do.
That should set some taste standards but I'm not sure if
Harry Cohen's fanny is really up to it.
> Not too much to dislike these days. Most people I know have enough
> systems at home to run all the OS's. It's rather common to have
> multiple systems at home these days. Personally I have 11 systems
> at home and don't think it's abnormal (yes they are power on right now).
> Even if I am all screwed up I figure others might have 1/3 the systems
> available at home so enough to run a number of different OS's.
> It's difficult to know just what people really use at home these
> day's considering the glut of computer hardware on the market.
Wow! Authentic frontier gibberish. I haven't heard too much
of that since Blazing Saddles. As for what people have or don't
have at home, a census report or a survey would soon prove
whether you're abnormal or not.
Regardless, all the follow-up posts to the original seem to
be straying away from the intended topic. I suppose its
time for a song now -
Campdown lady sing this song, do dah, do dah.
-am © 2002
ma
"Paul Eggert" <egg...@twinsun.com> wrote in message
news:7w8z9su...@sic.twinsun.com...
> robertm...@hotmail.com (Robert Mullenax) writes:
>
> > when Sun unceremoniously dumped Solaris Intel after not 6 months
> > before reiterating their support for it. I made business decisions
> > based on their assurances they were supporting it.
>
> Sun takes 6 months? They're slow. Microsoft can do the same thing in
> ...Guess what Microsoft ended up doing with Chromeffects after
> "postponing" it?
That really really really seems like a very reasonable comparison to the
idiot decision from Sun to drop Intel.
Really really really. And I'm not a bit ironic. Absolutely not. No no.
/ma
Chris Morgan
> Obviously the post was a big exaggeration..and I am sorry for going how wild
> on it.
We don't need less passion and commitment in the sun community, so
... don't worry about it. I do find it quite horrible when people have
contempt for their own product, and I have to deal with it quite a bit
myself.
--
Chris Morgan <cm at mihalis.net> http://www.mihalis.net
Temp sig. - Enquire within
Chris Morgan
It was probably just before Scot McNealy's famous boast they they had
banned powerpoint and deleted gigabytes of files and people were now
more productive using white board technology and other substitutes.
http://www.cluetrain.com/clues.html
Chris Morgan
> On 16 Feb 2002 11:20:21 -0500, c...@mihalis.net wrote:
> >...
> >If it was really the gospel truth, I'd agree with you, but I don't
> >think it is. There probably should be some Windows machines at Sun,
> >after Excel IS the best spreadsheet for a lot of people,
>
> no, it's not.
>
> It's just a spreadsheet program, and like most of the M$-office programs,
> most people dont even tough 90% of its capabilities.
> The StarOffice spreadsheet program is just as good for the average user,
> including your average VP.
YES IT IS
I said a 'lot of people' but that doesn't have to include 'your
average VP'. There are a lot of Excel power users who will not accept
anything else. Unless you feel it's good to hire people with specific
skills and force them to retrain with inferior tools, you don't take
away Excel from power-users. I'm not talking about the average VP, I'm
talking serious users (for example many traders on Wall Street).
In case nobody was paying attention here, Excel is a strong contender
for world's best application since it is one of the key sources of
microsoft's power (ironically, it used to sell a lot of Apple Macs at
one point).
Denying this isn't going to get us anywhere.
Alan Coopersmith
|In comp.unix.solaris John D Groenveld <groe...@cse.psu.edu> wrote:
|# In article <3C6EF2BB...@pi.be>, Benny <kley...@pi.be> wrote:
|# >What IS MS Project ?
|# http://www.microsoft.com/catalog/display.asp?subid=22&site=804&x=39&y=18
|
|I'm not looking it up, and I don't feel like I'm missing anything.
Probably because you're not managing any projects with large numbers of
people, interrelated tasks, and complicated interdependencies.
One alternative I've seen for Solaris is Netmosphere Enact, which is
completely java/web-browser based, so is client-agnostic. I've only
played with it a little and never used MS Project so I can't really
compare.
--
________________________________________________________________________
Alan Coopersmith al...@alum.calberkeley.org
http://soar.Berkeley.EDU/~alanc/ aka: Alan.Coo...@Sun.COM
Working for, but definitely not speaking for, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
ura
Robert Mullenax
I think this is really low..for those of you that pooh-pooh the Solaris
Intel community, to hold up Microsoft as some sort of standard bearer.
I expect better out of Sun...and the $2,000,000 of Sun equipment plus
software and maintenance gives us the right to.
There truly is no hope here for some you..that despise PC's so much
that you just can't say "Sun, done you wrong."
Robert Mullenax
You are really a piece of work..since when did Usenet become the U.S. Senate
where we all address every one politely, never raise our voices..etc.
I am far from the only one that has ever written a post here in anger..
sure I should think before I post sometimes..but "hostaging the newsgroup"??
Your blind loyalty to Sun seems to me to make your posts the ones
that can't be taken seriously. Mine are just opinions..sometimes
hastily written, sometimes not. I'll be damned if you are going to
somehow "shame" me into not posting them.
Stefaan A Eeckels
Chris Morgan <c...@mihalis.net> wrote:
> phi...@bolthole.no-bots.com (Philip Brown) writes:
>
> > On 16 Feb 2002 11:20:21 -0500, c...@mihalis.net wrote:
> > >...
> > >If it was really the gospel truth, I'd agree with you, but I don't
> > >think it is. There probably should be some Windows machines at Sun,
> > >after Excel IS the best spreadsheet for a lot of people,
> >
> > no, it's not.
> >
> > It's just a spreadsheet program, and like most of the M$-office programs,
> > most people dont even tough 90% of its capabilities.
> > The StarOffice spreadsheet program is just as good for the average user,
> > including your average VP.
>
> YES IT IS
>
> I said a 'lot of people' but that doesn't have to include 'your
> average VP'. There are a lot of Excel power users who will not accept
> anything else. Unless you feel it's good to hire people with specific
> skills and force them to retrain with inferior tools, you don't take
> away Excel from power-users. I'm not talking about the average VP, I'm
> talking serious users (for example many traders on Wall Street).
I know a couple of statisticians who swear by Excel; they've
abandoned SAS, and don't know 'S' or 'R' (and they're _not_
interested). Excel allows them to do their job, but I've done
the same stuff in a fraction of the time in 'R'. Plus it's
documented, and someone else can take over - not something that's
easily done with an overly spreadsheet.
>
> In case nobody was paying attention here, Excel is a strong contender
> for world's best application since it is one of the key sources of
> microsoft's power (ironically, it used to sell a lot of Apple Macs at
> one point).
Ironically, the strong contender for the world's best application
is currently trying to read a (fairly big, about 18000 lines
of 24 columns) CSV file. It's been at it for the past
4 hours (on a dual PIII-800 with only 512MB, that'll teach
me to buy such a bog-slow machine ;-).
>
> Denying this isn't going to get us anywhere.
--
Stefaan
--
"There's nothing wrong with Java - well actually there is, but we won't
intrude on private grief here - except that it is pretty presumptuous
and demanding, and shows clear signs of fixation at the anal stage: it
doesn't just throw exceptions, it throws tantrums." --Steve Blinkhorn
cjt
>
> cyp...@punk.net writes in comp.unix.solaris:
> |In comp.unix.solaris John D Groenveld <groe...@cse.psu.edu> wrote:
> |# In article <3C6EF2BB...@pi.be>, Benny <kley...@pi.be> wrote:
> |# >What IS MS Project ?
> |# http://www.microsoft.com/catalog/display.asp?subid=22&site=804&x=39&y=18
> |
> |I'm not looking it up, and I don't feel like I'm missing anything.
>
> Probably because you're not managing any projects with large numbers of
> people, interrelated tasks, and complicated interdependencies.
>
> One alternative I've seen for Solaris is Netmosphere Enact, which is
> completely java/web-browser based, so is client-agnostic. I've only
> played with it a little and never used MS Project so I can't really
> compare.
It's been a long time since I tried to use Project, but my recollection of
it is that it, like much Windows software, is too wed to the keyboard, with
no way to batch in large quantities of information. For small projects, you
don't need CPM, etc., and for big projects, it can be very cumbersome to have
to set up and load all the information by hand.
Maybe they've changed that by now.
Chris Morgan
> I know a couple of statisticians who swear by Excel; they've
> abandoned SAS, and don't know 'S' or 'R' (and they're _not_
> interested). Excel allows them to do their job, but I've done
> the same stuff in a fraction of the time in 'R'. Plus it's
> documented, and someone else can take over - not something that's
> easily done with an overly spreadsheet.
I agree entirely. There is a lot of work done in Excel that could be
done more efficently with other tools, but it is so good for a quick
look at some figures, a few charts etc, and once someone is adept with
it, they can tackle a lot of tasks rapidly (tackle, not complete -
hopefully the best will know when it's time to write a program or turn
to some other tool).
> > In case nobody was paying attention here, Excel is a strong contender
> > for world's best application since it is one of the key sources of
> > microsoft's power (ironically, it used to sell a lot of Apple Macs at
> > one point).
>
> Ironically, the strong contender for the world's best application
> is currently trying to read a (fairly big, about 18000 lines
> of 24 columns) CSV file. It's been at it for the past
> 4 hours (on a dual PIII-800 with only 512MB, that'll teach
> me to buy such a bog-slow machine ;-).
It is, occasionally crap, true :)
Philip Brown
>phi...@bolthole.no-bots.com (Philip Brown) writes:
>
>> On 16 Feb 2002 11:20:21 -0500, c...@mihalis.net wrote:
>> >after Excel IS the best spreadsheet for a lot of people,
>>
>> no, it's not.
>YES IT IS
>
>I said a 'lot of people' but that doesn't have to include 'your
>average VP'. There are a lot of Excel power users who will not accept
>anything else.
"refuse to run anything else" == brainwashed.
That does not make Except "the best spreadsheet"
> Unless you feel it's good to hire people with specific
>skills and force them to retrain with inferior tools,
oh, yeah, huge retraining. What, it takes people weeks to learn
"instead of the button with THIS icon, you click on the button with
THAT icon".
If they're that stupid, they're not that great of an asset to the company
in the first place.
>In case nobody was paying attention here, Excel is a strong contender
>for world's best application since it is one of the key sources of
>microsoft's power (ironically, it used to sell a lot of Apple Macs at
>one point).
>
>Denying this isn't going to get us anywhere.
I dont deny that microsoft brainwashing that their tools are the only way
to possibly make a spreadsheet, is one of the foundations of its power.
Bob Palowoda
> palo...@fiver.net (Bob Palowoda) writes:
>
> > Rich Teer <ri...@rite-group.com> wrote in message news:<Pine.GSO.4.44.020216...@grover.rite-group.com>...
> > > On 16 Feb 2002, Seth Hettich wrote:
> > >
> > > > I agree. I was in ENS in '97 and '98. I recall internal web servers
> > > > being cut off from the network when ppt files were found on them. We
> > > > (ENS) were on the lookout for windows users, and we shut them down.
> > >
> > > Now THAT'S the kind of talk I like to hear!
> >
> > Kind of a silly policy considering you can save .ppt files from
> > Star/OpenOffice. I've done ppt files for presentations and
> > never been cut off by ENS.
>
> It was probably just before Scot McNealy's famous boast they they had
> banned powerpoint and deleted gigabytes of files and people were now
> more productive using white board technology and other substitutes.
>
So I take it you have no intention of purchasing a copy of StarOffice 6.0
when it's released? Dosn't really matter at this point what kind of
files StarOffice read/writes just as long as Sun can convience the
endusers it's worth the money they pay for it. It still would be
nice to use the newer StarOffice on a laptop running Solaris during
presentations to Sun customers. And I don't mean getting screwed by
RDI/Tadpole or NatureTech.
---Bob
sighup
Paul's point was, that's how business works and it's a reality. There are no guarantees. As a
businessman yourself, your decisions are based on the overall goal of your company and not
based on the word you gave your customers - simply because you don't know yourself what's
going to happen.
Benny
>
> You are really a piece of work..since when did Usenet become the U.S. Senate
> where we all address every one politely, never raise our voices..etc.
> I am far from the only one that has ever written a post here in anger..
> sure I should think before I post sometimes..but "hostaging the newsgroup"??
>
> Your blind loyalty to Sun seems to me to make your posts the ones
> that can't be taken seriously. Mine are just opinions..sometimes
> hastily written, sometimes not. I'll be damned if you are going to
> somehow "shame" me into not posting them.
I can not take any posting written in anger seriously.
Alexey Parshin
Excel is a very bad written product. It has the nice interface and a lot of
features, but it has problems reading its own format files. Recently, I
had to convert several Excel files to *.csv. The damned thing crashed on me
twice, while the StarOffice openned the same files with no problems.
r...@toad.rmkhome.com
:It's not true, at least for the sales and field people. Up until
:November, I worked at the Sun office in Albany, NY, and everybody in the
:place - including the district sales and SE managers - had Suns on their
:desktops. The laptop situation was different; most folks ran Windows on
:their laptops, but a lot of the SEs either ran Linux or had them set up
:to dual boot (which I did). Presentations were done in StarOffice, which
:meant for most of us writing them on our desktops (in Solaris) and
:downloading a copy to the laptop just to take with us to the meeting.
:Every other field office I was in (Burlington MA, NYC, King of Prussia
:PA, Columbus OH off the top of my head) had the same situation. In fact,
:all of the larger offices had been moving to all-SunRay infrastructure. I
:don't know where "Philo" is getting his information, but based on this I
:think he's either making it up completely or extrapolating wildly from a
:couple of isolated situations.
Yup. As of a year ago the Sun campus in Broomfield, Colorado (Interlocken)
is all Sunray.
--
Rick Kelly r...@rmkhome.com www.rmkhome.com
Paul Eggert
> I think this is really low..for those of you that pooh-pooh the Solaris
> Intel community, to hold up Microsoft as some sort of standard bearer.
It's not just Sun and Microsoft. Every company cancels projects.
Look at Compaq and the Alpha, for example. A company that stops
canceling money-losing projects is a company that will go bankrupt
soon.
Every company says "the project is live!" until just before they
decide to kill it. They're usually telling the truth: they're trying
to keep the project going. One should not feel betrayed simply
because a company later decides to cancel.
Casper H.S. Dik
>I said a 'lot of people' but that doesn't have to include 'your
>average VP'. There are a lot of Excel power users who will not accept
>anything else. Unless you feel it's good to hire people with specific
>skills and force them to retrain with inferior tools, you don't take
>away Excel from power-users. I'm not talking about the average VP, I'm
>talking serious users (for example many traders on Wall Street).
Excel "power users" are invariable using the *WRONG TOOL* for the
job at hand.
One of the more interesting Y2K problems at banks was locating all
the software that exists in the form of Excel spreadsheets; software
that really should have existed elsewhere.
Sometimes business critical data and programs only exists as spreadsheet
on someone's PC. Probably not backed up.
Casper
--
Expressed in this posting are my opinions. They are in no way related
to opinions held by my employer, Sun Microsystems.
Statements on Sun products included here are not gospel and may
be fiction rather than truth.
Chris Morgan
> Excel "power users" are invariable using the *WRONG TOOL* for the
> job at hand.
Whoah now! That's much too broad a generalisation. It's kind of like
saying "spreadsheets are only for beginners".
> One of the more interesting Y2K problems at banks was locating all
> the software that exists in the form of Excel spreadsheets; software
> that really should have existed elsewhere.
>
> Sometimes business critical data and programs only exists as spreadsheet
> on someone's PC. Probably not backed up.
Mission critical data and power-users don't have a perfect match. Some
programs are experimental and throw-away. If you took away ad-hoc
number munging from some desktops, you'd prevent a lot of useful work
getting done. A lot of programs start off as excel spreadsheets before
becoming projects for real programmers. The whole point is, a numbers
guy can make a spreadsheet focussing on the problem domain
Anthony Mandic
> We don't need less passion and commitment in the sun community, so
> ... don't worry about it.
There's nothing wrong with passion and commitment. It just
needs to be channeled correctly. As usual all the posts in
this thread are really going nowhere.
We all know what really needs to be done. Someone suggested
something similar in c.u.s a while back and I wish I'd replied
then.
We need an international Sun user group. Quite frankly I'm
surprised Sun doesn't have one and Sun doesn't run conferences.
Of course, it can't call itself ISUG because Sybase already
has that (http://www.isug.com and we've got dibs on .org too).
Maybe ISMUG - International Sun Microsystems User Group (or
SCUM or SUNK or whatever. We can worry about the name later).
A user group is about the only way to really get the ear of
Sun marketing and management. Of course, it may already be
too late. This should have been done years ago. Its going to
take a while for Scott M. and co. to get used to them and
start listening to the feedback.
Of course, it will take a lot of effort to get the ball rolling
and getting the right people on the board, forming local user
groups (if you want to know what that's going to be like, check
aus.compters.sun for a thread I started a year or two ago),
running conferences, offering benfits, publishing a journal,
etc. etc. etc.
If anyone wants some more advice, follow up on this thread.
-am © 2002
Neil W Rickert
>Casper H.S. Dik <Caspe...@Sun.COM> writes:
>> Excel "power users" are invariable using the *WRONG TOOL* for the
>> job at hand.
>Whoah now! That's much too broad a generalisation. It's kind of like
>saying "spreadsheets are only for beginners".
Maybe. But in many cases it is right.
>> Sometimes business critical data and programs only exists as spreadsheet
>> on someone's PC. Probably not backed up.
>Mission critical data and power-users don't have a perfect match. Some
>programs are experimental and throw-away.
The trouble is that when the data has become important, people
still use spreadsheets where they should not.
The spreadsheet is the most effective tool ever written for making a
large number of errors in a very short time.
Steve Bellenot
Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu> wrote:
>
>The spreadsheet is the most effective tool ever written for making a
>large number of errors in a very short time.
>
Not to disagree with the spirit of this statement, but my vote for the
most effective tool for generating large number of error in a short
time is a typo in a shell script.
--
http://www.math.fsu.edu/~bellenot
bellenot <At/> math.fsu.edu
+1.850.644.7189 (4053fax)
Chris Morgan
> Chris Morgan <c...@mihalis.net> writes:
> >Casper H.S. Dik <Caspe...@Sun.COM> writes:
>
> >> Excel "power users" are invariable using the *WRONG TOOL* for the
> >> job at hand.
>
> >Whoah now! That's much too broad a generalisation. It's kind of like
> >saying "spreadsheets are only for beginners".
>
> Maybe. But in many cases it is right.
I'm out of this discussion.
Steve Kappel
And the world can't take Sun's promises seriously either.
"Solaris x86 lives ... no Solaris x86 dies, we got Linux on the brain"
"At Sun we put all the wood behind a single arrow (SPARC & Solaris)."
cjt
Of course, the existence of Solaris X86 has never been consistent with the
"single arrow" claim, so its elimination would move Sun closer to a "single
arrow."
Neil W Rickert
>In comp.unix.solaris Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu> wrote:
># The spreadsheet is the most effective tool ever written for making a
># large number of errors in a very short time.
>But tell us how you really feel! ;-)
Of course I do use spreadsheets. They are also quite useful. But
they are not to be trusted, and careful cross checking is needed.
It is not that they miscalculate -- it is that they make user error
far too easy.
David Douthitt
> Steve Kappel wrote:
> > And the world can't take Sun's promises seriously either.
> >
> > "Solaris x86 lives ... no Solaris x86 dies, we got Linux on the brain"
> >
> > "At Sun we put all the wood behind a single arrow (SPARC & Solaris)."
>
> Of course, the existence of Solaris X86 has never been consistent with the
> "single arrow" claim, so its elimination would move Sun closer to a "single
> arrow."
To some extent, all this hubbab about Solaris/i86 is strange - simply
because I can remember back when Solaris had yet to run on Intel - or even
was considered for such a thing. I can remember the warm feeling I got
when I discovered Solaris was finally available for the Intel-based CPU
(Solaris 2 wasn't it?).
Now that 2.9 (I mean Solaris 9) is coming out, they dropped it. I just
don't think Sun may have been that strongly an advocate for i386 - tell me
if I'm wrong - I could very well be, I haven't been in the Solaris
community more than a passerby keeping an eye on the Solaris storefront...
--
David Douthitt
UNIX Systems Administrator
HP-UX, Unixware, Linux
n9...@callsign.net
Peter Lawler
> Robert Mullenax wrote:
> >
> > Benny <kley...@pi.be> wrote in message news:<3C6E34EE...@pi.be>...
> > > > If this is true..and I have no reason to doubt you..it's enough to make
> > > > me puke AND not mind going to Linux just on principal. What kind
> > > > of *&^% idiots have these people become at Sun? This company is indeed
> > > > doomed, what a bunch of morons. They don't DESERVE to be caretakers
> > > > of Solaris. Time to sell your Sun stock if it ever peaks above 10
> > > > again. Hell, whatever the faults of Linux zealots at least they recognize
> > > > Windows as the piece of steaming crap that it is. These Sun managers
> > > > don't know their a%^ from a hole in the ground.
> > >
> > > You truly do need to get a life Robert.
> >
> > Ahh...the old get a life insult, can't you be more creative?
> >
> > Looks like the original poster was making it up..and I retract what I said..
> > which since I was mad about unrelated stuff, shouldn't have been written
> > in the first place.
>
>
> Funny though how you swallowed that nonsense post without any kind of
> scepticism,
I assume you're talking about my 'nonsense'? Hence, I'll come back out
of troll mode....
What was so nonsensical about it, please?
Can I explain it like this? There's a bunch of Ford purchasers, users
*AND* shareholders, watching the board of directors and sales people
of Ford drive around in small to medium class GM cars? This, at the
same time as putting a major delay on equivalent Ford models and
complaining that, whilst they realise their current models don't
compete in that class, they don't make enough money to fund
development?
I think that's the nonsense.
Pete.
Benny
> of troll mode....
Peter,
I don't think your post is nonsense, I found your post quite interesting
and am eager to find out what the meeting brings.
The posting I was talking about was the one from Philo saying "I can
assure you that 90+% of Sun's VP and Directors, sales, field and
marketing people use Windows almost exclusively."
Robert felt it necessary to cut/past part of that post in another thread
as if it was a news item on CNN everyone should know about ...
regards,
Benny
Stefaan A Eeckels
ss...@mailbag.com (David Douthitt) wrote:
> In article <3C71DA87...@prodigy.net>, cjt <chel...@prodigy.net>
> wrote:
>
> > Steve Kappel wrote:
>
> > > And the world can't take Sun's promises seriously either.
> > >
> > > "Solaris x86 lives ... no Solaris x86 dies, we got Linux on the
> > > brain"
> > >
> > > "At Sun we put all the wood behind a single arrow (SPARC &
> > > Solaris)."
> >
> > Of course, the existence of Solaris X86 has never been consistent with
> > the "single arrow" claim, so its elimination would move Sun closer to
> > a "single arrow."
>
> To some extent, all this hubbab about Solaris/i86 is strange - simply
> because I can remember back when Solaris had yet to run on Intel - or
> even was considered for such a thing. I can remember the warm feeling I
> got when I discovered Solaris was finally available for the Intel-based
> CPU(Solaris 2 wasn't it?).
Sun bought Interactive Systems (a little time after they became
"preferred publisher" of SysV.4 on i386) and there still was
money to be made in the Unix/x86 market. SCO was selling well,
and Interactive wasn't doing too badly (even though the dearth
of drivers was already becoming apparent).
Then Linux redefined the market for Unix on commodity hardware,
and the maximum one could ask for a boxed set became roughly
$49.99, meaning that those companies who couldn't rely on
volunteer kernel and systems programmers, or subsidize the OS
development through hardware sales, were forced to drop out of
the market. Witness SCO, and now Solaris/x86.
> Now that 2.9 (I mean Solaris 9) is coming out, they dropped it. I just
> don't think Sun may have been that strongly an advocate for i386 - tell
> me if I'm wrong - I could very well be, I haven't been in the Solaris
> community more than a passerby keeping an eye on the Solaris
> storefront...
x86 is a commodity architecture, and selling x86 systems isn't a
nice business to be in. There's little added value technology-wise,
and a constant pressure on margins. The real question is whether
the companies that really benefit from x86 sales (Microsoft in the
first place, and Intel second) are prepared to tolerate niche
players.
Peter Lawler
> > I assume you're talking about my 'nonsense'? Hence, I'll come back out
> > of troll mode....
>
> Peter,
>
> I don't think your post is nonsense, I found your post quite interesting
> and am eager to find out what the meeting brings.
Benny,
Thanks for your kind words. It'll probably just bring more un(der)paid
work for suckers like us - but heck, that's why we do this, eh?
> > The posting I was talking about was the one from Philo saying "I can
> assure you that 90+% of Sun's VP and Directors, sales, field and
> marketing people use Windows almost exclusively."
Aaaah. The old 'when is "the original poster not the original poster"
routine. Sorry for misunderstanding.
</Returns to troll land>
Pete.
Peter Lawler
<snip Unix history lesson>
> x86 is a commodity architecture, and selling x86 systems isn't a
> nice business to be in. There's little added value technology-wise,
Er, reality check here? PCI, Firewire, USB? Go look at the low to
midrange SPARC boxen. Then, investigate an AMD system with similar
(admittedly, not 64bit) capabilities. Compare price. Better still,
compare price of desktop Blade and compare what you can buy in AMD
world. Try profiling development lifecycle of, say, large
multi-developer project - tell me which is cheaper to develop on and
faster to market (due to raw compile speed)? Sun don't have to sell
the damned things, just settle on a smaller set of core systems/cards
to support, evaluate different methods to get 3rd party support,
testing etc. 'Think outside the box' (erg, hate that term).
> and a constant pressure on margins. The real question is whether
> the companies that really benefit from x86 sales (Microsoft in the
> first place, and Intel second) are prepared to tolerate niche
> players.
No, the question is, Who is going to stand up to them? AMD would love
to, Sun would love to. IBM don't seem to care, SGI is for all intents
and purposes, gone the way of the Dodo (along with DEC). Yes, Linux
would like to beat M$/Intel, but lack current market penetration IMHO
in the way Solaris has. And who's going to develop commercial 64bit
Unix for AMD? What happens *IF* AMD (somehow) magically come out with
a SPARC killer in three years time? Sun will have no alternative CPU
experience! As a desktop, small workgroup server, SPARC sucks (when
compared to Intel - cold hard technical fact - in bang for buck,
IMHO). And if there's no x86 Solaris, what'll you use? NT, Linux,
Novell? What will you scale up to?
Who *really* has the balls to do it - create the market for the
M$/Intel killers, as well as the engineering background, but also the
ten or fifteen year business plans? IMHO, no one's ever really done a
good job even trying to do it.
Until we hear from Sun later this week, I'll reserve judgement on the
answer to that.
</definately_returning_to_troll>
Pete.
Peter Lawler
<snip>
> With that many to chose from, you'd think that the Sun VP's could pick
> ONE of them to run Solaris x86 for their own use.
Nah Phil, way too hard - that would have involved making a decision
all those years ago :-)
Pete.
David Michaels
>
> In article <slrna6rpsj....@bolthole.com>, phi...@bolthole.no-
> bots.com says...
> > On Sat, 16 Feb 2002 02:14:14 GMT, james...@verizon.net wrote:
> > >...
> > >The "entire management structure" does NOT run on M$ office.
> > >
> > >StarOffice is the tool of choice for word processing, spreadsheets
> > >and presentations.
> >
> > And they run StarOffice on top of ms-windows, for laptops.
> > Why? I have no frickin idea. It's just too bizzare.
>
> Why? Isn't it obvious? When I was at Sun, I wrote all my presentations on
> my (SPARC/Solaris) desktop and dumped them to my laptop when I needed to
> take them on the road.
>
It's not obvious. The only thing that is obvious is that windows comes
shoved down your throat when you buy Intel hardware.
David Michaels
I noticed something I thought ineresting a while back with the PMT
function in excel and I believe/know that the problem exists in other
programs. The answer is apparently incorect when the amount of time is
above a certain point. The program begins to return results that are
inconsistent with common sense. I'm sure this is a well know fact when
calculateing PMT but it does make me question acuracy in programs like
excel, most would consider the answer it produces absolutely valid in
all circumstances and they are not.
I also must say that I almost have a problem with people saying "I know
WORD" I had to take classes in Microsoft products, I did very well in
them but they do make me want to postpone my education to avoid takeing
more.
Just thought I'd share, If anyone has a sugestion on how to
avoid,microsoft products in school I'd greatly appreciate it.
dm.....
Rich Teer
> Just thought I'd share, If anyone has a sugestion on how to
> avoid,microsoft products in school I'd greatly appreciate it.
One word: StarOffice.
--
Rich Teer
President,
Rite Online Inc.
Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-online.net
Robert Mullenax
> needs to be channeled correctly. As usual all the posts in
> this thread are really going nowhere.
>
> We all know what really needs to be done. Someone suggested
> something similar in c.u.s a while back and I wish I'd replied
> then.
>
> We need an international Sun user group. Quite frankly I'm
> surprised Sun doesn't have one and Sun doesn't run conferences.
> Of course, it can't call itself ISUG because Sybase already
> has that (http://www.isug.com and we've got dibs on .org too).
> Maybe ISMUG - International Sun Microsystems User Group (or
> SCUM or SUNK or whatever. We can worry about the name later).
I agree that many of the posts were just useless rants, especially some of
mine. But didn't the Sun Linux announcement pretty much guarantee
the end of Solaris Intel? I can't see how Sun could support three OS'es.
Solaris Intel is certainly worth saving, but wouldn't the Linux announcement
mwan it would all be a wasted effort?
Philip Brown
>...
>I agree that many of the posts were just useless rants, especially some of
>mine. But didn't the Sun Linux announcement pretty much guarantee
>the end of Solaris Intel? I can't see how Sun could support three OS'es.
Supporting Solaris/sparc and Solaris/x86 isnt like supporting 2 OS's:
It's more like 1.2
>Solaris Intel is certainly worth saving, but wouldn't the Linux announcement
>mwan it would all be a wasted effort?
Depends on what customers tell Sun they want, I reckon.
Sun's just trying to second-guess the market. If the market comes back and
says "You're on crack", they'll go back to the drawing board.
--
[Trim the no-bots from my address to reply to me by email!]
[ Do NOT email-CC me on posts. Pick one or the other.]
S.1618 http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d105:SN01618:@@@D
http://www.spamlaws.com/state/ca1.html
David Douthitt
Eeckels <Stefaan...@ecc.lu> wrote:
> Sun bought Interactive Systems
[...]
They did?? I had no idea - wondered where ISV went...
> Then Linux redefined the market for Unix on commodity hardware,
> and the maximum one could ask for a boxed set became roughly
> $49.99, meaning that those companies who couldn't rely on
> volunteer kernel and systems programmers, or subsidize the OS
> development through hardware sales, were forced to drop out of
> the market. Witness SCO, and now Solaris/x86.
Well, SCO is probably a bad example. They are STILL out and going quite
strong. The name is gone, but the code is there - LOTS of it. They own
almost all of the old code, and Unixware (now OpenUnix 8) is still very
viable - and it only runs on ix86. And the Unixware code base is the
oldest there is: original AT&T code, gone to Univel, then Novell, then
SCO, and now to Caldera.
> x86 is a commodity architecture, and selling x86 systems isn't a
> nice business to be in. There's little added value technology-wise,
> and a constant pressure on margins.
Isn't that the truth?
David Douthitt
google...@six-by-nine.com.au (Peter Lawler) wrote:
> And who's going to develop commercial 64bit
> Unix for AMD?
Caldera and OpenUNIX...
Then there's BSD and Linux...
David Douthitt
<mich...@email.uc.edu> wrote:
> Just thought I'd share. If anyone has a sugestion on how to
> avoid Microsoft products in school I'd greatly appreciate it.
Here's a suggestion - though it greatly depends on a lot. If you can
install software on your own Windows PC... if everything is networked...
if you can install a workstation on the network... and if you can DO this
without getting into trouble...
Install a UNIX server of your choice and run a VNC server on it - and run
WinVNC on the PC in full-screen mode. It's very nice, and you can skip
out on all the Microsoft nasties. If you set up a Samba share on the UNIX
side, you can even mount the share on the Windows side and have a seamless
integration between the two.
That is... IF... Don't get into trouble - it's not worth it.
David Douthitt
Rich Teer <ri...@rite-group.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Feb 2002, David Michaels wrote:
>
> > Just thought I'd share, If anyone has a sugestion on how to
> > avoid,microsoft products in school I'd greatly appreciate it.
>
> One word: StarOffice.
I ran StarOffice under Windows NT 4.0 with 64M - and it ran SLOW. I ran
it under Linux with 64M - and it was even slower - and didn't even have
enough room to install right, and installed ALL SORTS of little sticky
tendrils all over, like green alge that threatens to suffocate you...
Just how much memory does StarOffice need? Is it another one of those
things like Windows 2000 and Windows XP that force you to get a whole new
PC just to run it?
Use AbiWord and Gnumeric instead - they don't need 128M to run.
Philip Brown
>
>I ran StarOffice under Windows NT 4.0 with 64M - and it ran SLOW.
ANYTHING under NT with 64 megs is slow :-P
>I ran
>it under Linux with 64M - and it was even slower -
hell, GNOME under linux with 64M is slow.
>Just how much memory does StarOffice need?
128megs minimum, I'd say.
> Is it another one of those
>things like Windows 2000 and Windows XP that force you to get a whole new
>PC just to run it?
naw. Just lots of ram.
Bob Palowoda
> In article <df26d3aa.02021...@posting.google.com>,
> google...@six-by-nine.com.au (Peter Lawler) wrote:
>
> > And who's going to develop commercial 64bit
> > Unix for AMD?
>
> Caldera and OpenUNIX...
>
Under a buck for 6 months, doing a reverse split in two weeks
(kiss of death), no broker recommendations and to add frosting
to the cake their accountants are no other than Arthur Anderson.
Should be OpenDeath.
---Bob
Anthony Mandic
> I agree that many of the posts were just useless rants, especially some of
> mine. But didn't the Sun Linux announcement pretty much guarantee
> the end of Solaris Intel? I can't see how Sun could support three OS'es.
> Solaris Intel is certainly worth saving, but wouldn't the Linux announcement
> mwan it would all be a wasted effort?
That's why I stated that such a user group should have been
formed years ago. If there had been a viable one that had
been in existence for a few years, Sun would have to deal
with it as a legitimate representation of their user base.
The board of such a group would have had access to Sun's
board and they would have been "known" and their opinions
recognised.
That would have been enough to stop this Linux nonsense.
As it now stands we'd have to vote with our feet. Peter
Lawler's attempts would most likely prove fruitless.
Its probably too late to do much about it now but its not
too late to consider forming a user group and prevent
future "mistakes".
A couple of questions to consider -
1) Why isn't there a Sun user group?
2) Why aren't there Sun conferences (apart from some Java
stuff)?
3) Who, exactly, does Sun listen to when doing its planning?
-am © 20 02 2002
Anthony Mandic
> Depends on what customers tell Sun they want, I reckon.
Exactly! But what's the best way of doing this? Ranting
in newsgroups or having a group of users representing a
much wider collection of users sitting down with Sun's
board and hold annual discussions on topics of interest
to said users and making sure the point gets across
undiluted?
> Sun's just trying to second-guess the market. If the market comes back
> and says "You're on crack", they'll go back to the drawing board.
Or if a vested third party manipulating the market causes
it to appear as if they are on track to gain an advantage?
I think you know exactly who I'm referring to with this.
-am © 20 02 2002
Stefaan A Eeckels
ss...@mailbag.com (David Douthitt) wrote:
> In article <20020219083453.1dc5...@ecc.lu>, Stefaan A
> Eeckels <Stefaan...@ecc.lu> wrote:
>
> > Sun bought Interactive Systems
>
> [...]
>
> They did?? I had no idea - wondered where ISV went...
Indeed. I have the 2-page Byte ad that hypes Interactive Unix from
SunSoft (May 1992), and promise a "cheap" ($195) promotional upgrade to
Solaris for x86. The ad reads:
To get There, Start Here.
below that slogan a floppy disk labelled "SunSoft Interactive UNIX".
The left page shows a picture of the Solaris SVR4 for x0x86 box
(in clear plastic).
The July 1992 issue of Byte has a 2-page ad for Solaris featuring
Scott sending a mail to Ed (using "Multimedia Mail").
It reads:
--------------------start quote-------------------------
To: Ed Zander
From: Scott McNealy
Subject: It's So Easy!
Yo, Ed.
Solaris is so easy, even I can use it. And I'm not the only one who
thinks so - important people around the world have contacted me. I've
summarized their comment in the attached video and voice messages.
After you've reviewed them please schedule appointments with the
hottest prospects using your Workgroup Calendar Manager. Do make sure
George and John are still the right people.
Scott
--------------------end quote----------------------------
> > Then Linux redefined the market for Unix on commodity hardware,
> > and the maximum one could ask for a boxed set became roughly
> > $49.99, meaning that those companies who couldn't rely on
> > volunteer kernel and systems programmers, or subsidize the OS
> > development through hardware sales, were forced to drop out of
> > the market. Witness SCO, and now Solaris/x86.
>
> Well, SCO is probably a bad example. They are STILL out and going quite
> strong. The name is gone, but the code is there - LOTS of it. They own
> almost all of the old code, and Unixware (now OpenUnix 8) is still very
> viable - and it only runs on ix86. And the Unixware code base is the
> oldest there is: original AT&T code, gone to Univel, then Novell, then
> SCO, and now to Caldera.
And Caldera is obviously unable to make a decent buck out
of OpenUnix, which seems to vindicate the choice of Sun
to stop trying to flog Solaris for x86.
James Lee
Re: Meeting of the not-so-secret 6 regarding Solx86:
> I ran StarOffice under Windows NT 4.0 with 64M - and it ran SLOW. I ran
> it under Linux with 64M - and it was even slower - and didn't even have
> enough room to install right, and installed ALL SORTS of little sticky
> tendrils all over, like green alge that threatens to suffocate you...
Such as? This is the Solaris news group so let's not worry about NT and
Linux. My Solaris installs have one directory for the software, one for
the user files and a ~/.sversionrc. It would all go in the one directory
if I didn't use the "-net" install. That's hardly a take over. Nothing
needs root permission or to go in any root directories, although you do
need the C++ system patch.
> Just how much memory does StarOffice need? Is it another one of those
> things like Windows 2000 and Windows XP that force you to get a whole new
> PC just to run it?
64M is marginal, 128 is better but what are you worried about? 128M of PC
RAM is about $10. [Unless you run Sparc. x86 isn't just about faster
processors, I like plenty of memory too.]
bit-b...@maney.org
: Philip Brown wrote:
:> Depends on what customers tell Sun they want, I reckon.
: Exactly! But what's the best way of doing this? Ranting
: in newsgroups or having a group of users representing a
: much wider collection of users sitting down with Sun's
: board and hold annual discussions on topics of interest
: to said users and making sure the point gets across
: undiluted?
If we got together and started a SUG (with a significant number of
members), it wouldn't really matter that much if we got to talk to
the Board. The Board would most definitely be monitoring what we
were saying and doing (as I'm sure they are doing with the newsgroups,
even if they write the newsgroups off as being populated by kooks).
[...]
fpsm
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Alan Coopersmith
| 1) Why isn't there a Sun user group?
There was one, years ago, but I don't know what ever happened to it.
You can still find some references to it on google, including
comp.org.sug on the newsgroups archive, but the newsgroup is mostly spam
for the last few years, with a plea for a new ISP in 1997 being the last
mention I saw of the actual group. The last sign of actual life I see
is:
http://groups.google.com/groups?start=325&hl=en&group=comp.org.sug&selm=4nd1jn%24jjv%40decius.ultra.net
I vaguely remember them having a falling out with Sun at some point -
whether or not that hastened their demise, I don't know.
--
________________________________________________________________________
Alan Coopersmith al...@alum.calberkeley.org
http://soar.Berkeley.EDU/~alanc/ aka: Alan.Coo...@Sun.COM
Working for, but definitely not speaking for, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
John D Groenveld
Anthony Mandic <sp_am...@start.com.au> wrote:
> 3) Who, exactly, does Sun listen to when doing its planning?
A combination of SGI's former execs, "industry analysts," and Ms Cleo.
John
groe...@acm.org
Joerg Schilling
> A couple of questions to consider -
>
> 1) Why isn't there a Sun user group?
> 2) Why aren't there Sun conferences (apart from some Java
> stuff)?
This is the big big Sun problem.
Sun forced the Sun User Group to close around 1995.
--
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