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According to http://www.compaq.com/products/software/linux/ the high end Alpha servers don't support Linux yet. I'm sure Compaq Research has done it many times, but if it's not supported at this point, it means Compaq dosen't feel that a client needs to pay possibly millions for a server that won't perform at it's maximum capibilities when loaded with Linux. Compaq is pushing Linux big time, and it will definitly be a technical reason for it not running on a server, not a marketing decision.

If you want to know more about this system look at this link on the hardware. http://www.compaq.com/alphaserver/gs320/index.html

A quick search on Google revealed that an 8x Pentium III (Xeon) at 500 MHz, SMP would run at 3996.06 BogoMips. Compared to 46170.90 BogoMIPS. Or about 8% of the box. Of course, I wonder how the price comparison point would be. :)

Ok, I finally tracked down the Alpha pricing. But I'll be danged if I can get it to work. Can someone else? yeeshk.

The RedHat 7.0 system I mentioned earlier is now online and accessible. Go to http://www.testdrive.compaq.com/ to get all the details and register for a free shell account.

We're setting up a test drive of RedHat 7.0 in the Compaq Test Drive program today. It should be available this afternoon - we'll post an announcement on our main page when it is. Once it's ready, you'll be able to get a free shell account on it by going to our web site and registering. You'll be able to explore what the new release is like and try compiling your code against it without having to download and install it on your own system.

We're setting up a test drive of RedHat 7.0 in the Compaq Test Drive program today. It should be available this afternoon - we'll post an announcement on our main page when it is. Once it's ready, you'll be able to get a free shell account on it by going to our web site and registering. You'll be able to explore what the new release is like and try compiling your code against it without having to download and install it on your own system.

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The license page at http:/ /crl.research.compaq.com/downloads/register.cgi?do wnload=Linux+Jukebox now shows a copy of the GNU General Public License.

Try http://crl.research.compaq.com/downloads/download. cgi/postmaster @127.0.0.1/Linux+Jukebox/winjukebox_v1_0.zip

"This software is a starting point for a complete Jukebox Manager. It documents the API to the PJB-100 so that Linux developers can add features such as a graphical user interface and music capture from CD."

" If you have any problems with this site, please send mail to the Compaq Corporate Research Downloads Team."

Simple isn't it?

Malk-a-mite

Two gets you five the broken license was a miscommunication between a management drone and a legal department drone.

What bothers me though is the whole setup: what you do is submit your first and last name, and your e-mail address, and they e-mail you a "personalized Linux Jukebox download URL". How's that for tracking?

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• 
  So, here goes: Some of the features below, when read, will obviously require special hardware to support them. However, the hardware is useless without proper operating system support. Remember that this post is addressing features that commercial UNIX has and Linux doesn't. The details for the average developer obtaining the appropriate hardware to develop for and test on is irrelevant to this discussion.
  
  
• Advanced high availability clustering.
  
  • Many people, when they see the word "clustering" automatically think of Beowulf, get all defensive, and miss the point completely. Clustering, in this context, is a enterprise necessity. When there are thousands of users depending on mission critical applications, clustering is the way to go. I spent a week in California recently training on DEC's (gah, Compaq)
  • TruCluster product. Now, granted, DEC has had over a decade of practice on VMS clustering to implement this, but it's what clustering should be. The filesystems are shared, and the systems can redirect network I/O internally. The filesystems are shared, but still involve a "director" of sorts, a member of the cluster to coordinate access. This is not to be confused with NFS, because the individual cluster members can write to the disk directly, rather than proxied through the "director" node.
    
  
  
• An advanced, multivolume, dynamically resizable, journaled filesystem
  
  • IBM's JFS (which I realize is being ported -- but vapor != implementation) and DEC's AdvFS both offer dynamically resizable, journalling filesystems. I'm not sure if JFS allows multiple volumes, but AdvFS does. Basically what this accomplishes is the ability to add and remove disks from a live filesystem as it is running.

  • Most people know the benefits of a journalling filesystem, but for those who don't: When your system is writing something to disk, even though the program you're using eventually boils down to calling a write() system call to get it done, the OS actually has to perform many steps. All a disk is capable of guarenteeing is a single atomic write of a single block. Now, if you're writing out a file, this consists of many block writes for the data, but also writes for the meta-data. Meta data is the stuff associated with files, such as timestamps, permissions, links, but also stuff that the user never sees that maintains filesystem integrity. If your system crashes, loses power, etc during the middle of a meta-data write, you can lose an entire filesystem. At the very least, you'll end up with a potentially lengthy fsck(8) when you reboot. A journally filesystem essentially uses a "staging" area, where all writes to disk are queued up -- also on disk. A file and associated meta data can be guarenteed to be written or not written -- but not half way. If the operation did not complete, the operation can be completed when the system comes back up. This is called a replay, and it uses the journal to do this. Filesystem recoveries take seconds, instead of minutes or even hours on huge filesystems. Going into more detail is really beyond the scope of this post, but you get the idea.

  
  
• Dynamic hardware reconfiguration
  
  • On large systems, including mainframes and high end UNIX servers, you can remove and add hardware
  • including processors and memory while the system is up and running. Solaris, for example, offers the ability to shutdown processors in mid execution so you can remove and replace them. Some Dell servers, running Windows NT or Windows 2000 also allow this, and add the ability to add and remove PCI cards on-the-fly.
  
  
• System auditing
  
  • One of the major features that many sites
  • require is system auditing. This is very much more that system logging. The major difference is that, for example, I can set up auditing on my Digital UNIX servers so that any time any user calls the "socket" system call, I have a record of it, which arguments where used, when it was called, and by whom. I can restrict things even further so that I only see the record when user "joebob" called socket(), etc.
  
  
• Others.
  
  • There are other features that come to mind, beyond the scalability issues that the post I'm replying to mentioned, but I'm hungry, and want my dinner. :)
  
  I hope this clears up some of the clouds surrounding this sort of thing. I noticed that my original post was moderated down by someone ambitious as a "troll", when in fact it was not meant to be one at all. One of the major weaknesses of the Linux/BSD/Open Source community, and this has been mentioned before by people more known to the public eye than myself, is the inablility to look at the faults. No OS, including Linux, is perfect. The ability to see the imperfections, the flaws, the faults, and the missing features is what can enable the Open Source community to improve their software even more. Turning a blind eye to real issues does nothing other than stoke the fires of corporate ignorance as well as being self-fulfilling FUD.
  

• 
  So, here goes:
  
  
• Advanced high availability clustering.
  
  • Many people, when they see the word "clustering" automatically think of Beowulf, get all defensive, and miss the point completely. Clustering, in this context, is a enterprise necessity. When there are thousands of users depending on mission critical applications, clustering is the way to go. I spent a week in California recently training on
  • DEC's (gah, Compaq) TruCluster product. Now, granted, DEC has had over a decade of practice on VMS clustering to implement this, but it's what clustering should be.

Intel is releasing a chip that will require modifications to ATX.

Therefore, it would be worthwhile to assume this chip will consume over 100 watts.

a deal.

|C|o |m|p|a|q| sells 12,000 Processor EV68 machine to DOD

What about something like this? And if that's not big enough, try the RS/6000 SP...
Or you might try going with Compaq/Alpha, who also have some pretty decent machines that can scale up to 32 CPUs in a box and even more for the SC series.

Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.

Prepare to witness the most concerted and massive engineering effort -- both social and technical -- ever undertaken by mankind: The digital equivalent of damming the ocean.

I wrote about this on Slashdot almost a year ago, in the vague hope it might become a featured article: The music and movie industies are working very hard to prevent you from using your lawfully-obtained material in any way they don't want. To that end, they have formed the Copy Protection Technical Working Group (CPTWG), which is working hand-in-hand with a ton of high-tech companies to bring pervasive copy protection measures to your PC.

I saved my original screed on the subject, and it's reproduced below, with appropriate updates. Bottom Line: Do not let them sneak this garbage past you or your friends. If you find that a product contains copy protection, don't buy it, and encourage others to do likewise.

____________________

Recent stories on Slashdot have told of the ongoing "tennis match" between digital content providers versus consumers and technically skilled people. The recent cracking of DVD's Content Scrambling System (CSS) lent ammunition to the opinion held by computing professionals and users that copy protection systems are doomed to fail. The effort has been likened to building a dam against the ocean; a foolish and useless exercise. In Slashdot discussion fora, the point has often been raised, "If you can perceive it, you can copy it. What are they going to do, encrypt the bits all the way to the speaker/electron gun?" If the Copy Protection Technical Working Group gets its way, that is precisely what's going to happen.

I received a piece of email spam today, which actually turned out to be useful (probably the only time that's ever happened anywhere). It directed me to a flat panel display industry group. Among others, one of the links pointed to the California Display Network, which had a link pointing to technical info on flat panel technology. Since I currently earn my living writing graphics card and display drivers, I clicked through to see what I could learn.

I found an entry for an overview of digital visual interfaces, provided by Silicon Image. As I reviewed the headings of the slides, one entry stopped me cold: Conten t Protection Status. Content protection? In a flat panel?? Yup: "Implementation of DVI content protection is suitable for PCs and monitors." [emphasis mine]

Thus began an evening of link clicking and Google searches to find out what this off-handed remark could mean. The slide made mention of the 'CPTWG'. This is the Copy Protection Technical Working Group, a consortium of content providers (movie companies), consumer electronics manufacturers, and players in the IT industry. This is the same group that developed CSS for DVD players.

One paragraph from the above page is particularly disturbing:

CPTWG has focused until now only on "casual piracy [sic]", characterized as what a grandmother can do in her home with her DVD. Piracy [sic] requiring even the level of expertise (and equipment) of her grandson, who might be an EE student, has been excluded from consideration. There is a growing awareness that a broader content protection effort may be necessary.

The most recent meeting of the CPTWG was yesterday, 8 December, 1999. Their meeting announcements may be found here. It costs $100 to attend. According to the site, their last meeting was on 11 April 2000. It's not clear if additional meetings have been held at regular intervals.

The attendance roster from the April meeting (RTF file) lists a very interesting, and possibly worrying, mix of organizations. A partial list of representatives included:

• MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America),
• AFMA (American Film Marketing Association),
• Sony Pictures Entertainment,
• Universal Studios,
• Warner Bros.,
• Disney,
• Paramount,
• CEMA (Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association),
• MEI (parent company to Panasonic), makers of consumer electronics,
• Pioneer, makers of consumer electronics,
• JVC, makers of consumer electronics,
• Philips, makers of consumer electronics and VLSI components (including video encoders),
• Sony, makers of consumer electronics, computers, and displays,
• Toshiba, makers of consumer electronics, computers, flat panels, disk drives, digital cameras, copiers, and laser printers,
• NEC, makers of computers, displays, printers, and telecomm equipment,
• Hewlett Packard, makers of computers, printers, and testing/measuring equipment (oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, etc.),
• Quantum, makers of disk drives,
• IBM, makers of computers, disk drives, and bunches of other stuff,
• Compaq, makers of computers,
• Apple Computer, makers of computers,
• ATI Technologies, makers of PC graphics cards,
• Dolby Labs, creators and licensors of audio enhancement technologies,
• Intel, makers of microprocessors, motherboard controllers, and graphics and peripheral chips,
• Microsoft, software market monopolists,
• Dow Chemical (I have no idea why they're here),
• DVD-CCA, licensors of CSS, and currently in court trying to prevent the spread of DeCSS,
• A number of law firms.

If you download the roster and read closely, you'll see every major piece of your computer represented. There is no doubt that at least one part of your computer -- your CPU, your RAM, your disk drive, your graphics card, your monitor -- is manufactured by one of these companies.

If you look further still, you'll see there are no consumer advocacy groups listed.

What are they all working toward? Quite simply, to prevent you from using your lawfully obtained digital material in any way they don't want.

Here's one example of how they'll do it: If you've visited Fry's or CompUSA recently, you'll notice that full-size flat panel displays are starting to appear. Currently, most of these displays are based on the old VGA analog signals, which are converted into the digital signals needed by the panels. The Digital Display Working Group is working on a new connector and signalling standard called Digital Visual Interface (DVI) that will allow computer displays to go all-digital. You won't need a DAC on the video card; the digital signals will be fed straight through to the display. Image fidelity will be much higher, since there won't be any intervening DAC/ADC conversions. Version 1.0 of the standard has been published and is available for download (PDF format). The DVI spec currently does not stipulate copy protection measures. However, plans are in the works to incorporate it.

Intel is one of the primary contributors to this effort. On Intel's developer site, they have some papers on copy protection for IEEE 1394 (Firewire) digital streams. In two separate articles, 1394-based Digital Content Protection: an Intel Proposal, and Content Protection for IEEE 1394 Serial Buses (the latter being a Powerpoint presentation masquerading as a PDF file), Intel outlines its proposal for protecting digital content over Firewire. By using cryptographic authentication techniques, a device offering digital content will "handshake" with other devices on the bus to assure that digital data is only received by, "compliant devices." In a revised overview of the proposal, IDF Talk: Content Protection for the IEEE 1394 Bus, Intel offers concrete implementation details, including:

• DSS (Digital Signature Standard)
• Diffie-Hellman key exchange for device authentication,
• Blowfish cipher for content encryption, with a keylength of 32-128 bits,
• Digital watermarking techniques to declare "rights" (right to playback, right to copy, etc.) to the receiving device.

The full proposal (currently version 0.91), with lots of technical detail, is mirrored on CPTWG's site (the links to Intel's site don't work).

Intel's proposal also recommends that the copy protection system be field-upgradeable to thwart ongoing attacks, and that it should be possible to revoke (read: disable) a device determined to be "compromised." (The tone of the proposals is also interesting. It's previously been thought that, because of USB, Intel is hostile to IEEE 1394. Yet these proposals suggest that Intel's quite enthusiastic about 1394... Once copy protection is incorporated.)

Intel's proposal mentions only IEEE 1394. However, it also mentions that there's nothing preventing the technique being applied generally to any bi-directional link. So for all occurrences of '1394', substitute 'DVI', and you've got an idea of what to look forward to in your new digital monitor. And your new DVD player. And your new HDTV set. And your new USB speakers.

Intel goes even further in their paper, A Framework for DVD-Audio Content Protection. In it, the author suggests that DVD-Audio recorders permanently remember the IRSC (International Standard Recording Code) of every song the device is asked to copy, so that it may only be copied once, period. They go on to suggest that the recorder could have a modem built-in to authorize (read: purchase) the ability to make additional copies.

In short, through this industry consortium, Hollywood proposes to exert control over every link in the digital chain, from the digital camera, to the disk drive, to the CPU, to the graphics card, to your display. They will decide what rights you have. Even if a court decides Fair Use includes multiple copies for personal use (such as assembling a video montage), it won't matter. Your computer will still refuse to make the copies (and probably fink on you, as well).

This coordinated effort is ostensibly to combat unsanctioned copying (which the industry chronically refers to incorrectly as 'theft' and 'piracy'). However, no one has ever been able to provably quantify the value of unrealized sales due to such copying. All dollar estimates that have been published are just that: estimates, based on idealized extrapolations of what-if scenarios. Moreover, although the industry claims to "lose" billions every year, they continue to post record profits. Finally, despite the proliferation of CDR drives and the Internet, most unrealized sales are the result of organized mass counterfeiting rings, not casual copying. None of the proposed methods I've seen appear to thwart mass counterfeiting at all. So clearly there's some other reason for all this.

The thing that puzzles me most is why the computer and consumer electronics industries haven't told Hollywood to take a hike. Intel's copy protection proposals state, in bold letters, "No content protection = No Hollywood content." This belief is taken as axiomatic by all the players, and appears to be the driving force behind the entire effort. This belief is also false.

Audio on CDs are recorded as plaintext, and the music industry continues to earn rapacious profits. Even the with the advent of CDRs, no music industry executive in his right mind would suggest dropping CD sales and going strictly with cassettes and vinyl. If nothing else, the manufacturing costs for CDs are lower than those for cassettes and vinyl. Likewise, DVDs are tremendously cheaper to produce than videotapes. Videotape duplication is a labor-intensive process; DVDs can be stamped out automatically. The savings in cost-of-goods alone would more than balance against any unrealized sales from casual copying. Corporate shareholders, always mindful of the bottom line, will also demand that the studios move to the cheaper, higher-quality process, copy protected or not.

The fact is that the computer and electronics firms are in the driver's seat, and are free to dictate how the new digital formats will work. Hollywood will use whatever format becomes popular, whether it has copy protection or not. They may grumble about it, but they'll use it. The economics afford them little choice.

We are only now beginning to explore the social and ethical consequences of a Star Trek-like universe where everything can be infinitely duplcated at zero cost. We have no idea where things will end up. But now is not the time to start erecting electronic walls and imposing artificial scarcity. The ignoble and richly-deserved death of DIVX showed -- fairly unequivocally, I thought -- that consumers want to make free, fair use of their digital media, without interference from outside. I believe its death reinforces the future toward which we've been pushing for centuries: Increased abundance at reduced cost. We can only hope that the lesson of DIVX will be repeated until it is learned.

Schwab

It was just yesterday that I was looking at a Compaq IPAQ. I just want something small and pretty to sit in my living room for quick internet access. But, the IPAQ only comes with a modem....didn't see anywhere to upgrade it with ethernet. I guess I won't be buying myself one of those.

The demo I saw at Mobicom 2000 was pretty convincing and they had a sleeve for compact-flash and one for PC-cards. All that's needed is drivers for the ethernet and wireless lan cards.

For that matter, why just Ethernet support, I want wireless ethernet support, I hate wires! Simon

The iPAQ runs X?

I tried to find out more about the iPAQ but the links from this page were broken.

Does anybody have info on the iPAQ running X?

Vanguard

Btw, does anyone still use VMS in new applications anymore? and what other architectures does it run on?

OpenVMS runs today on the Alpha platform. New applications. Let's see, the Northern Light search engine runs on OpenVMS (not the front-end web servers, but the actual database). The Accuweather website is hosted by a VMS cluster running the OSU DECthreads webserver. Check out the OpenVMS website for more success stories. People think of OpenVMS as being dead, but it still brings in $4 billion in annual revenue for Compaq. The healthcare, semiconductor, and lotto businesses would gring to a halt without OpenVMS.

I just want to publicly state what a complete idiot jesse berst is. I've never, EVER found a bit of worthwhile information in anything he's ever written. His opinions are nothing more than that, his opinions, and they are often wrong and backed by nothing more than his own ill-conceived speculation. We are all now dumber after reading any of the trash he writes.
Now, to mobile linux. Most of the embedded stuff here at (a href="http://www.linuxworldexpo.com">LinuxWorld is alright. There is one stellar exception that stands above the crowd--PocketLinux. These guys rock! First of all, unlike some of the other guys, they're not putting a desktop linux distro in my hand. Do I want to run X on a screen that's 2" x 3"? Hell no. They've built an incredibly fast system that will display full motion video (that's right) on the Compaq iPaq. It's completely open source, and the framework is standards based and it appears to be easy to write your own applications on. It scales as well. Everything from a handheld to a cellular phone to a set-top box is possible. This is where the future of mobile linux is going to be. These guys finally did it right. Anyone else considering an embedded solution would do themselves a favor to look over there. And one final note, this product is SHIPPING TODAY! Yesterday even. This is not vapor ware. Spend the $150 and start developing apps today!

Q: What are these same companies contributing to these "core values" of Linux? A: With the partial exception of IBM, nothing.

Just some examples to show that these companies make valuable code contributions to the free software comunity:

HP
Mauve
A free (GPL) test suite for the Java[tm].

Compaq
iPAQ port
Compaq Ports Linux to iPAQ Handheld Computer.

They should also be mentioned for their Linux work regarding 64bit processor architectures (Alpha, Intel).

SUN
StarOffice
Under the motto: Lets use the best of breed components (read filters) in our GNOME office suite. And let us not forget their donations to the Debian developers for the UltraSparc port.

SGI
SGI OSS Projects
Look at this long project list ... it speaks for itself I think.

- Just my Euro 0.02c

Yeah, right. "In time for the holidays" in retail means "in the warehouses by September". Intel isn't even shipping 1.0GHz PIII in high volume yet. If you go to Compaq and select a top-of-the-line desktop, they try to sell you a 1GHz AMD Athlon. Dell tries to sell you an 800MHz PIII. Intel is struggling to catch up. That's OK. But instead of pumping 1GHz machines that work out the door in volume at a reasonable price, they're announcing new vaporware machines to confuse customers. That's not OK. IBM used to get into antitrust trouble for that sort of thing.

http://speechbot.research.compaq.com/
"SpeechBot is an experimental index of popular US radio shows, based on state-of-the-art speech recognition technology*. SpeechBot currently indexes 5423 hours of content from 5652 programs."

I remembered seeing it on /. a while ago... December 8th, 1999 is an impressive recall time for someone who has to check his driver's licence to see his birthday <G>
--

Some years ago, I read that there was more computing power in a particular digital watch than there had been in the whole world in 1962!

This article has made me think about that more deeply - nowadays, there is more computing power in this digital watch than in a 10 year old PC.

As Jeffrey Harrow would say, "We've only just begun!".

"Give the anarchist a cigarette"

1. Form Factor.- The iPaq by itself is about the same size as the Palm IIIc. However, the phone sleeve would make it bigger, so it'd barely fit the form factor spec (however, note that you get a color device and HW that, OS aside, is better than current Palm devices). To use the sleeve you'd have to use headphones, which answers some of the concerns about an integrated phone/PDA (and some people won't want to carry headphones).
2. OS.- It doesn't run Palm OS, it is CE. However, note that the multitasking (and app protection) capabilities really help a convergence device. Palm OS has a long way to go. Also, you can upgrade the iPAQ's flash ROM, so eventually you might even run Linux, when you fell the PDA version is mature (www.Handheld.org has been discussed before).
3. CE might have a lot of emotional baggage, but IMO is the only OS that could do this at this time (maybe PSION, from what I've read, but Palm OS doesn't have a chance).
4. Encrypted Wallet App.- There are several CE options.
5. WAP browser.- There is a WAP browser for CE plus, with the speed of the iPAQ, you can actually use Pocket IE to browse the Internet (or synch AvantGo content), so you don't need much rework on existing sites. A PDA friendly HTML version helps, but a rewrite might not be needed.
6. Wireless antenna.- Included with the cell phone sleeve.
7. Audio jack.- Like all other CE devices, it has multimedia, so you have digital audio. The iPAQ sleeve really allow you to play MP3/WMA music while you do something else (like take notes or browse the internet)
8. Dedicated storage expansion slot.- Some feel that the iPAQ's 32 MB is enough, at least for contact and some multimedia. It isn't clear if Compaq will include a CF or MMC slot on the phone sleeve (if any storage at all).
9. IR Port.- Included. And with Peacemaker you can beam contacts to Palm devices
10. Standard integrated pager.- Again, no details, but if it's a PCS cell phone sleeve, I'd expect it to have some paging capabilities.

I think Sony is paying attention, but their choice of using Palm OS (no multimedia, no multithreading), and the fact they're trying to target a specific audience (Palm V users who want color) for their first device, would prevent them to deliver this device (at least, not by Christmas this year, maybe next year with the StrongArm Palm OS).

Another option that goes with the iPAQ is Ricochet 128 (or other high speed mobile Internet access provider), albeit the coverage area is smaller. Using the iPAQ PC Card sleeve, you can use the Merlin Ricochet PC Card (which might be smaller than the cell phone sleeve) and you could do VoIP (there is an application for that). And using the planned video sleeve with a serial Ricochet modem (a separate device, which defeats the purpose of convergence), you could even use your iPAQ as a portable video phone (still a bit experimental, but some development is being done on streaming video with CE)...

Another advantage of the iPAQ is that when BlueTooth becomes prevalent (in the next 2 years), in theory you'll just need to get a BT sleeve, so you PDA will remain the same and still control your other devices (assuming Compaq releases such a sleeve and that MS adds BT support to the OS). Also, future version of the iPAQ will have a faster CPU and more memory, and maybe a dedicated storage slot (MMC?), and will likely use the same sleeve system...

It isn't perfect, but it takes from what is available today and IMO it's the best integrated solution candidate you're going to see this year (and maybe until next summer).

If you look under "Highly Available Applications", it talks about programming for it.

Yes, I work for Compaq. No, I don't speak for them.

Actually, the iPAQ is based on the operating system formerly known as Windows CE. It uses a 206MHz StrongARM processor. Here's a picture and the specs.

Actually, the iPAQ is based on the operating system formerly known as Windows CE. It uses a 206MHz StrongARM processor. Here's a picture and the specs.

I think strongARM based handhelds like the iPAQ probably exceed this machine's capabilities in every category except i/o (it had multiple SMD disk interfaces, SCSI, and a VME bus for slow stuff, if I recall correctly). I don't see why X wouldn't work quite nicely on the iPAQ if you had an appropriate toolkit that worked well with the 320x200 screen resolution.

iPAQ specs: http://www.compaq.com/ products/handhelds/pocketpc/H3650.html

An interesting statement, given that Digital Equipment Corporation first provided that capability on VAXclusters under VMS in 1983, and the current development of that inital product is available from Compaq under both OpenVMS VAX and Alpha systems as well as forming the basis for TruCluster for Tru64 UNIX, including a distributed Cluster File System.

Not that it's isn't a good thing for Linux to have these capabilities, or for them to be Open Source; but maintaining that nothing like NOW exists currently just isn't the case.

My recommendations if you are on a budget: Stick with Linux and Sybase and get some vendor support. Definitely stick with x86 hardware since you are on a budget. The size of the database is less important than the actual design. How much data is going to be used at any one given time? Figuring that out will tell you if you need to add another gig or three of RAM. A good dual-processor machine should be sufficient, perhaps a quad if there are lots of simultaneous users. Bottlenecks in a database are rarely at the CPU.

IMHO, you should concentrate on your RAID setup. Get ~20 4GB disks and set them up with RAID 10(full mirroring+striping). That alone is going to give you much, much better performance than a solution with say 4 20GB disks. At $200 per disk this will run you about $4,000. Paying careful attention to this will get you your best database performance while still spending a hell of a lot less than you would with an RS/6000.

You need the performance, but obviously you can't fit the whole database in RAM. So get a good RAID controller and buy as many small disks for it as you can.

• There are millions of 'em in the world
• In many environments management would appreciate the ability to migrate to something more unix-like
• These things have awesome I/O bandwidth
• 65,536 IRQ's!

If you are interested in learning about VMS, I suggest you check out the following: The VMS FAQ and VMS documentation site, which have a plethora of info. There is not much info on VMS available from source besides Compaq, online or off.

The best way to learn about VMS is to get a VMS system. You can get a VAX system on eBay very cheap (sub-$100) and you can get a complete VMS system software for free (see ). The VMS hobbyist page. There's also a VAX emulator which comes with VMS (Charon VAX).

The Unix texts which refer to Unix as a kludged system are "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" by Raymond, and "The Unix Philosophy" by Gancarz, both of which admit that Unix is a rapid-prototyping environment, and that design is not done when programming for the system. Projects like the Hurd and Linux make me yawn because they are just more implementations of Unix. What's the point? If you inist on cloning an existing system, at least clone something interesting!

I don't think so.

Please see Measured Capacity of an Ethernet: Myths and Reality.

a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language.

• The actual code which drives the back end of your application (Enzyme's PHP, and raw bits of static HTML), which is protected by the GPL.
• The data that you're archiving using Enzyme, protected by Copyright (or not, depending on who is collecting the information and the terms under which they acquired it).
• The confluence of the code and database, which produces the actual site with published information.

With that said, I do not believe that running a web-based application is equivalent to redistribution-without-source, as you suggest. If I install a program on a remote computer, then open an Xterm window to interact with it on my local workstation, I haven't redistributed the initial app, despite the fact that my workstation and the remote server are exchanging all kinds of information necessary to my interaction with the application. I'm merely accessing it using another means. If that was really redistribution without source, then anyone taking advantage of the Compaq Test Drive on a Linux server would have caused Compaq to violate the GPL.

Similarly, if I set up an Enzyme driven site and open it up to the world, I haven't redistributed the code, even in binary form. I'm letting people interact with it to produce output specifically tailored for their needs, using an intermediary program (Netscape, Lynx, Mozilla, IE...) of their choosing.

While from a design point of view, it's nice that you can view all of the elements of a web-driven system - database, server, client, network - as a unified whole, it isn't. At least, not as far as the GPL is concerned. Your program rides piggyback on a web server, process requests based on the clients' requests, and transmits information back accordingly. And that's all.

More information about installing Linux on a Compaq iPaq is at:
http://www.handhelds.org/Com paq/iPAQH3600/install.html

(This is an early release of Linux - this site is actually hosted by Compaq, who recently released full hardware specs on the iPaq including low level registers and ports, making their iPaq an attractive "open" platform to program on)

There are pictures of the iPaq:
http://www.compaq.com/products/h andhelds/pocketpc/

The iPaq is a PocketPC with flash ROM - you can actually replace WinCE with a PDA version of Linux. The screenshots of Gnome are 320x240 - so you probably could install Gnome on this Compaq iPaq PDA sometime in the near future.

Just a note, the reason you didn't see sample source code was that the 3-floppy distro was just a sample to see if the system would work on your hardware.

For Plan 9 v2 you had to buy the CD and manuals in order to get the source code. It was around 350 US when I bought it one and a half years ago. It's really nice that they managed to open-source v3.

And a note for "faeryman" who was writing that "Forte was the pre-curser to Plan 9": I think you are mixing up your references. Plan 9 from Bell Labs is a complete OS all written by Bell Labs folks (Lucent now, AT&T Bell Labs back then). From the looks of if, Forte is some sort of virtual application environment. Nothing to do with Plan 9.

What would you consider a retailer then?

From Merriam-Webster :

1. to sell in small quantities directly to the ultimate consumer

He did not specify major corporation. Has anyone asked Compaq? I know they have those test servers running many different OS's include FreeBSD.

Check the specs: The iPAQ has a lithium-polymer battery. Nice to see.

Respectfully, you may wish to consult the iPAQ specs and the Intel's StrongARM pages. No HD, no i386, no CDROM...

Perhaps you have it confused with one of the consumer PCs Compaq makes (the ones with funky "lump" cases)? Those are PCs.

Looking at information on the web about the new Compaq Wildfire series, surly they would be a sure contender..

You can look at the specs at:

Benchmark performance of GS320

Which says Suns EV10000 (64 processor) is not as fast as the 32 processor GS320....

And the price of the GS320 is estimated arround
$600,000 from:

The Register

So one would have thought this system to be a real contender!!! Considering the PCs are $1000 each and if we use 6000 of them, we would be able to afford 10 of these GS320 beasts (with a total of 320 alpha processors )...

Hey this is cool-
It looks like they are making all the source code, hardware specs, and other information availiable for download -I'm impressed! Does anybody out there have the time/resources to put one of these together?
-

Linux is monolithic. Tru64 uses a microkernel. Compaq used to let you try out their servers (a 30 day shell account) over at testdrive.compaq.com. Not sure if they still do it.

It looks like all the former Digital employees are behind this. Compaq doesn't seem to have a fucking clue about linux (try to find linux info for one of their PC's you'd buy at CompUSA), and the information is trickling from the old DEC employees. They have done well so far. That said, I hope Compaq makes the "right" decisions about how to handle this Tru64 thing. Linux could use the introduction of some Tru64 features. Honestly, I see their Tru64 sales declining steadily in the future, and Alpha/Linux installations increasing. It's already possible (has been for years) to run almost any Tru64 binary under Alpha/Linux. Incorporating Tru64 features to Linux and moving their UNIX division over to Linux would be a very strategic move for them.

--Bob

I didn't search very hard, just went to the first place I thought might have one. There are probably better solutions out there.

http://www.compaq.com/alphaserver/ es_series.html

It can hold 32GB of memory, and has an Alpha processor. Both Linux and BSDs can run on Alphas, though I don't know if they support this particular one or not. I don't see why not.