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http://www8.hp.com/in/en/softw... This product scans yours and third party libraries for security problems. It doesn't scan for standards or performance. For performance you can use red gate ants, but there isn't anything for standards.

At every large company I worked at (Apple, HP, SGI) they told us to help patent "stuff" as a defensive measure.

Patent TROLLS are the aggressors, do you blame these companies for planning ahead and preparing to defend themselves from bullies?

https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/03/02Apple-Sues-HTC-for-Patent-Infringement.html
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-news/press-release.html?id=460106&jumpid=reg_r1002_usen_c-001_title_r0001#.Uvu1ptgvA9Y
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-news/press-release.html?id=170196#.Uvu1XNgvA9Y
http://slashdot.org/story/06/10/25/1226209/sgi-sues-ati-for-patent-infringement

An offence is, it is said, the best defence...

At every large company I worked at (Apple, HP, SGI) they told us to help patent "stuff" as a defensive measure.

Patent TROLLS are the aggressors, do you blame these companies for planning ahead and preparing to defend themselves from bullies?

https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/03/02Apple-Sues-HTC-for-Patent-Infringement.html
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-news/press-release.html?id=460106&jumpid=reg_r1002_usen_c-001_title_r0001#.Uvu1ptgvA9Y
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-news/press-release.html?id=170196#.Uvu1XNgvA9Y
http://slashdot.org/story/06/10/25/1226209/sgi-sues-ati-for-patent-infringement

An offence is, it is said, the best defence...

Nearly all bugs are going to be found in the first couple of years

Or - like my old laptop - they just don't bother to fix them but instead tell you to buy a newer model/product. Back in the day, my former laptop had an issue where if you actually used both RAM slots, it would cause random freezes or spontaneous reboots. It was actually an issue with the Northbridge.

At first, HP said they were working on a fix and refused to properly RMA my laptop. Later, they said there was no fix, but - oops sorry - you're out of warranty now. After much bitching and threatening I got some extra RAM to use in a single slot, but I hate to think of all the people that were screwed by this issue.

Second issue: HP "tablet" laptops (reversible screen) were one of many types affected by nvidia chips which had heat issues. IIRC, the chips were soldered on the bottom of the board, and over time the heat would cause the solder to loosen until the chip started to come off the board. Many other manufacturers actually replaced bad models with good ones. HP would just replace the laptop with the same model until your warranty was done.
In fact, HP later released laptops with the same design, but a less thermally inefficient video card. The laptops still overheated because the heat dissipation was still *terrible* - oft killing the NIC instead of the video card - but it took a bit longer to do so (usually long enough that you were out-of-warranty once it happened).

The notice is about HP 9000 (read PA-RISC and HP-UX) and HP Integrity (read Itanium and HP-UX). HP 9000 was end-of-saled years ago and you know Itanium. The products are a dying remnant that some companies may be trying to stick to. Honestly, sometimes just people need to let go.

So if you're yelling loudly about your network or PC stuff not getting BIOS-upgrades, go back to fix your comments.
(What a coincidence, the captcha word is "extort")

No, it's just that the link went to the email received by a customer who is using HP9000 stuff. The change DOES also apply to the usual stuff like HP Proliant DL380 etc. For example, the mail I received today (as a Proliant user) was:

"Update: HP ProLiant Servers: Access to Firmware Updates & Service Pack for ProLiant

You are receiving this communication because you have been identified as a customer using HP ProLiant Servers and HP Services.

HP has made significant investments in its intellectual capital to provide the best value and experience for our customers. We continue to offer a differentiated customer experience with our comprehensive support portfolio. HP, as an industry leader, is well positioned to provide reliable support services across the globe with proprietary tools, HP trained engineers, and genuine certified HP parts. Only HP customers and authorized channel partners may download and use support materials.

In line with this commitment, starting in February 2014, Hewlett-Packard Company will change the way firmware updates and Service Pack for ProLiant (SPP) on HP ProLiant server products are accessed. Select server firmware and SPP on these products will only be accessed through the HP Support Center http://customer.hp.com/r?2.1.3... to customers with an active support agreement, HP CarePack, or warranty linked to their HP Support Center User ID and for the specific products being updated. We encourage you to review your current support coverage to ensure you have the appropriate coverage to maintain uninterrupted access to firmware updates and SPP for these products. "

A company called "Hewlett-Packard" still exists, but they sell printers and PCs.

...and some other machines that are neither printers nor PC nor "IBM-compatible PC architecture servers".

Nothing to do with the company that Bill and Dave started in the Palo Alto garage....

...except for that third set of machines, which date back to computers Bill and Dave's company did back in the 1980's (Itanium started out as a "PA-RISC NG" project), and arguably earlier (PA-RISC first showed up in an HP 3000, which was a line of computers dating back to 1973).

A company called "Hewlett-Packard" still exists, but they sell printers and PCs.

...and some other machines that are neither printers nor PC nor "IBM-compatible PC architecture servers".

Nothing to do with the company that Bill and Dave started in the Palo Alto garage....

...except for that third set of machines, which date back to computers Bill and Dave's company did back in the 1980's (Itanium started out as a "PA-RISC NG" project), and arguably earlier (PA-RISC first showed up in an HP 3000, which was a line of computers dating back to 1973).

A company called "Hewlett-Packard" still exists, but they sell printers and PCs.

...and some other machines that are neither printers nor PC nor "IBM-compatible PC architecture servers".

Nothing to do with the company that Bill and Dave started in the Palo Alto garage....

...except for that third set of machines, which date back to computers Bill and Dave's company did back in the 1980's (Itanium started out as a "PA-RISC NG" project), and arguably earlier (PA-RISC first showed up in an HP 3000, which was a line of computers dating back to 1973).

A company called "Hewlett-Packard" still exists, but they sell printers and PCs.

...and some other machines that are neither printers nor PC nor "IBM-compatible PC architecture servers".

Nothing to do with the company that Bill and Dave started in the Palo Alto garage....

...except for that third set of machines, which date back to computers Bill and Dave's company did back in the 1980's (Itanium started out as a "PA-RISC NG" project), and arguably earlier (PA-RISC first showed up in an HP 3000, which was a line of computers dating back to 1973).

A company called "Hewlett-Packard" still exists, but they sell printers and PCs.

...and some other machines that are neither printers nor PC nor "IBM-compatible PC architecture servers".

Nothing to do with the company that Bill and Dave started in the Palo Alto garage....

...except for that third set of machines, which date back to computers Bill and Dave's company did back in the 1980's (Itanium started out as a "PA-RISC NG" project), and arguably earlier (PA-RISC first showed up in an HP 3000, which was a line of computers dating back to 1973).

A company called "Hewlett-Packard" still exists, but they sell printers and PCs.

...and some other machines that are neither printers nor PC nor "IBM-compatible PC architecture servers".

Nothing to do with the company that Bill and Dave started in the Palo Alto garage....

...except for that third set of machines, which date back to computers Bill and Dave's company did back in the 1980's (Itanium started out as a "PA-RISC NG" project), and arguably earlier (PA-RISC first showed up in an HP 3000, which was a line of computers dating back to 1973).

HP claims that the HP-85 in 1980 was their entry into the "personal computer" market. http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/about... . That's two years after the launch of the Macintosh project inside Apple, though four years before the Mac shipped (January 1984). And that "personal computer" was so obscure nobody remembers it other than whoever made that page for HP. HP didn't introduce a personal computer that sold decently well until many years after the Mac shipped.

Remember, Apple's founders left HP because HP didn't want to make personal computers. So I'm pretty sure Apple hasn't forgotten that HP existed - they also remember that HP dropped the ball on personal computers, and didn't enter the market until after they started working on the Mac.

That being said, I think Schiller is referring to the market consolidation (http://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2013/10/10/pc-market-consolidating-around-top-3-vendors/) where there aren't any of the old school PC companies.

Hewlett-Packard / Compaq

Gateway 2000 now Gateway

Packard Bell

As always, you're not nearly as fabulous as you think you are, Apple.

Polaris: Virus Safe Computing for Windows XP. This is what Windows Vista's new security model should have been.

It is a luxury item, plain and simple. Most people do not buy computers that rival the price of a car.

So then you would argue that HP also makes luxury items? (and thats without graphics cards)

And of course, still funny

At 11$, it should fit the bill; made for scientists and engineers, should pass its own exams with 240 functions. The manual is here: http://h20628.www2.hp.com/km-ext/kmcsdirect/emr_na-c03519340-1.pdf Why recommend it? I own it and it does the job, if the problem is really for a calculator :)

Has Oracle/Sun also adapted LLVM/Clang for Solaris, or are they staying w/ GCC?

If you mean "as their official compiler", the answer to both questions is "no"; they have, instead, Sun^WOracle Solaris Studio's compilers. If you mean "in their package system", they could offer both, but currently only appear to offer GCC 3 and GCC 4.5.

How about IBM in AIX,

If you mean "as their official compiler", the answer to both questions is "no"; they have, instead, IBM XL C/C++.

or HP in HP/UX?

If you mean "as their official compiler", the answer to both questions is "no"; they have, instead, HP C/aC++.

I've had the daisy wheel. The dot matrix. The inkjets. (HP 722C was an awesome workhorse but darn that parallel port.) I had Alps that printed metallic inks. And various others. My absolute worst experience was with a Dell color laser. HORRIBLE. Print quality always had defects. Never really worked right. Would refuse to print based on hitting an estimated 2000 pages (regardless of print quality and ink availability).

I replaced that with an HP CM1415 FNW wireless multi-function color laser. It was one of the first to be able to print from your iPhone. The quality is decent. Has a touch screen control. Ink is expensive, but I've printed hundreds and hundreds of copies long long after the ink is low warning with next to no difference in print quality. And loading of new toner cartridges is a breeze. Pull out a drawer, remove the color you need to replace, drop in the new one.

For a $299 printer, this was one of the best buys I've made.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF10a/18972-18972-3328064-12004-3328083-4089171.html

According to an article on the HP site! http://h30565.www3.hp.com/t5/Feature-Articles/Telecommuting-Creates-Happier-and-More-Productive-Employees/ba-p/1834?jumpid=reg_r1002_usen_c-001_title_r0001

Well as long as HP doesn't try to sell telecommuting to other companies because they obviously don't know how to do it http://www8.hp.com/h20621/video-gallery/us/en/customer-care/computing-and-mobile-devices/network-and-internet/1251324810001/hp-home-office-telecommuting-equipment-basics/video/.

I have personally replaced the print head separately on an HP inkjet.

I did a Google search and found this:

HP offers two general inkjet print head designs: integrated into the ink cartridge (Integrated Print Head: IPH), and a long-life print head integrated into a printer which has Individual Ink Cartridges (IIC).

http://h10060.www1.hp.com/pageyield/articles/us/en/InkUseage.html

I figure the IIC printers are all "workgroup" printers, designed for higher volumes. They might have somewhat lower per-page costs, but probably were not designed for low power or for use in dusty environments.

Here's a thorough examination of how the IPH cartridge technology works:

http://wandel.ca/hp45_anatomy/

P.S. HP has a portable model: the "HP Officejet 100 Mobile Printer - L411a" This has its own battery so it can operate if its power supply fails, and the specs say it takes a maximum of 40 Watts maximum 15 Watts typical, while operating.

Per the HP web site, this takes a "94" cartridge, an IPH cartridge. I was wondering if that cartridge is chipped. Per these refilling instructions, it does not appear to be chipped; these instructions just say to refill the thing, no talk of resetting a chip counter.

http://www.printerfillingstation.com/Refill-Instructions/HP/H22.htm

HP also has another "mobile" printer model rated for more pages per month: "HP Officejet 150 Mobile All-in-One Printer - L511a" This too has a battery, and per HP needs max 65 Watts, typical 22 Watts. It uses the same cartridges as the HP Officejet 100 Mobile Printer.

So there's a possible system: standardize on the HP 94 cartridge, invest in refilling kits, and buy HP mobile printers that contain their own battery backup for printing when power is down.

I'm very fond of old laserjets myself(my trusty 4L did 13 years of service until I lost it, still in perfect working order, in a move). However, they are not low power devices. Especially when heating the fuser, you can easily spike to some hundreds of watts (HP quotes "330 watts average" while printing, 16-18 unless hard powered off, and that 'average' may well conceal a rush as the fuser first warms up, not kind to a low power/inverter operated environment).

They'll produce better output; but that's a good factor of ten more power than a dot matrix.

Slow down, read what I wrote, and think. Seriously. It doesn't matter what they do with it. The point is that the same product costs more today than it did yesterday. In terms of what it does in comparison to other products, it does the exact same thing as it did yesterday. If you can't understand the point after further consideration then don't quit your day job (I'm assuming you are in the custodial sciences in this case)

[crystal_Balls]

Well I am custodial scientist and I do not take offense. However what is really going on in the enterprise server industry is about to be shaken to its core.

By the end of next year Microsoft will buy out Dell completely. HP and Intel will get together with numerous other partners to produce hardware that blows away everything else in terms of operational costs. Citrix is in on the program along with many others except Microsoft.

There is still a shitload of businesses out there on Server 2008 and WinXP pro desktops in critical businesses. I know this for a fact as I see them and clean their desks at night. My thinking is that WinXP software will be all visualized so that the WinXP desktops will not have to be changed or even upgraded. The new servers will essentially sip power in comparison to the old racks that I see everywhere. So essentially most businesses will consider ditching their old heavy hardware and installing new low power replacements. The chances of them replacing all their desktops when Microsoft obsoletes XP pro are not good this time around. IBM, HP, Intel and all the big players know this and are moving in for the kill.

Microsoft increasing the seat CAL costs is suicide. Paying per processor for site CALS on servers is about to be considered little more than a money losing software pyramid scheme. I have no doubt that most so called ESSENTIAL Windows accounting interfaces will also be replaced this time around. Also IBM is teaming up with Google and Nvidia things are about to get very interesting. Microsoft is running scared and it is about time! [/crystal_Balls]

How the hell did the discussion suddenly get side tracked into blaming Intel and the hardware manufacturers for creating software security issues? But lately any post about hardware that is not 100 percent Microsoft friendly seems to get slagged by idiots.

The highest rated posts are essentially rants, not a whisper about why going along with Intel and essentially HP's modular hardware and software initiative has the potential to reduce costs and make securing and maintaining complex diverse networks easier.

SoCs in servers with a flexible software setup are what is coming guys the days of putting add on cards and software drivers for servers is limited. WHAT YOU do with the system and how you run it is the security system not THE OS or the hardware. Essentially Intel and many others are telling Microsoft to take a flying f++k with the security on chip garbage. AND IT IS ABOUT FRIGGIN' TIME

Within ten years it will be standard that plug in SoCs cards populate servers. The bandwidth problems are no longer an issue.

Intel and HP have it right this time moving away from the old mind set that you can only configure a server selling only proprietary closed source software drivers and closed operating systems that you pay extra depending on node scale size. Linux is poised to kick Microsoft's royal ass this time around. And it is largely due to what Microsoft has done to the industry by insisting on a piece of the processor number pie. Not to mention bullying the shit out of everybody in the consumer market with their hair brained locked boot loaders and data execution locks.

This is why Intel and HP are partnering with everybody but Microsoft on these chips and systems. Having to run closed MICROSOFT code and closed driver binaries has been the security problem with 64 bit servers and anyone with a brain realizes this.

GP is referring to this and this.

* memory management is explicit [merriam-webster.com] -- what does this mean?

Quantifying the Performance of Garbage Collection vs. Explicit Memory Management
Automatic vs. Explicit Memory Management: Settling the debate

* deterministic [merriam-webster.com] -- what does this mean?

I thought it was self evident. Here is a discussion of the matter.

* endemic [merriam-webster.com] use of a garbage collector... -- what does this mean?

Pervasive would be a better word. Languages that make garbage collected allocations for most or all things. For example in Java, aside from primitives, all allocations conceptually occur on the a garbage collected heap.

reference-counted heap objects

Reference counting: counting the number of references to an object.
Heap: an arena of memory maintained by a memory allocator. Also CPUs typically have no knowledge of how software manages heaps. You may be thinking of virtual memory
Objects: object in the generic sense of some amount of memory managed on a heap. These lecture notes show the same usage. The editors of this page also use the word 'object' in exactly the same manner when discussing pointers. It's not that hard to follow.

Putting it together we have objects on a heap for which reference counts are maintained; reference-counted heap objects.

"exchange" heap -- what does this mean?
* "local" heap -- what does this mean?

The link I provide to Patrick Walton's blog would get you there. Also, there is documentation, Sorry if discussing a new programming language involves terms you haven't heard. Computing can be like that sometimes.

(note: there is only one "heap" on most CPU architectures, so now we have added abstraction)

Now you are definitely confusing heaps and virtual memory. There are usually many, possibly thousands of heaps on a system at any given time with many distinct implementations of which the CPU is entirely ignorant. Memory allocators and virtual memory are different things.

* via an "owned" pointer -- what does this mean?

Similar to a C++ auto_ptr or unique_ptr. Again, the link I provided would get you there.

* wild pointers -- what does this mean?

Dangling pointer and wild pointer are synonomous.

Use of the exchange heap is exceptional and explicit yet immediately available when necessary -- what does this mean?

I provided a link directly to a discussion of this.

Memory "management" is reduced to efficient stack pointer manipulation -- uhh, what? the language sits around modifying content at %esp and %ebp along with some offsets? sounds far from efficient)

Incrementing a decrementing stack pointer registers is very efficient. Offsets are computed at compile time and the instructions typically require one CPU cycle and no memory access, given a naive model of a CPU. These techniques are a ancient and ubiquitous. Sorry you weren't familiar with them.

or simple, deterministic destruction -- what does this mean?

Others seem

The following two articles will (attempt to) remove your religious notion about UEFI being "evil" or "Satan". Please read them, they contain far more valuable information that the insane FUD you read about UEFI and Secure Boot on /.

The 30-year-long Reign of BIOS is Over: Why UEFI Will Rock Your IT and Enough with the UEFI drama already

Please remember, disregarding exceptions like me, the signal to noise ratio on /. is extremely low, the religious nutcases are a huge majority and the number of people who post with knowledge about what they are posting about is very close to zero. Thankfully for you, a lemming who just follows what the religious nuts on /. is hysterical about from day to day, there are people like me to inform and educate.

After 5 seconds worth of searching

I managed a zimbra system some time back and it was OK, support was pretty good. But it was all for the outlook plugins. Too much overhead otherwise (imo). Citadel is another good product.

Still, when all is said and done, count me in as a fanboy of sendmail on a xenU; despite my peers always singing the praises of postfix.

I use it with selinux, the milters, razor, pyzor, dcc, clam, combined with a virtusertable that routes non-existant users to the pit:
@some-domain.com error:nouser No such user here
and requiring reverse-dns for connecting hosts
(tip of hat to
http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Messaging/sendmail-refuse-mail-with-no-reverse-lookup-PTR-record/td-p/3194706 )
I've had no issues and nearly no spam, in years of operation.

My only xen beef is my stupidly creating a xenU on an LVM volume that's too small w/too little storage. This resulted in having to NFS-mount (or DRBD) a yum-cache as well as a clam download dir.

Some of the latest versions of HP P2000 SAN's have a built in service account enabed by default reachable through telnet/SSH that is totally hidden from the management GUI of the device.

https://www.krystalmods.com/index.php?title=hp-msa-g3-array-hidden-admin-user&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

HP eventually released an advisory about it suggesting you change the password.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c02662287

Demand Surges for Supercomputers

Do Supercomputers Still Matter?

Oil giant Total builds "world's largest commercial supercomputer"

They do: http://h17007.www1.hp.com/us/en/whatsnew/040511-1.aspx

Install tipping point appliances and run whatever you want behind it. Our manufacturing floor has been doing this for years in order to continue running legacy operating systems that cannot be upgraded because they are tool controllers. Sure...these aren't cheap but it's a damn sight less costly than upgrading every PC in your company with one that meets Win7 requirements.

It has a single Ivy Bridge e and only two high-end FirePro video cards which is good if you software is OpenCL based but useless if you are going to run CUDA. High end workstations will often have more than two graphics cards or GPU compute cards. This MacPro is at best a low end workstation which means if you want a high end mac workstation you are out of luck.
Here is an example of a high end workstation. BTW it is not the highest I could go.
http://h71016.www7.hp.com/dstore/MiddleFrame.asp?view=all&oi=E9CED&BEID=19701&SBLID=&AirTime=False&BaseId=38347&FamilyID=3551&ProductLineID=534&printPage=1

You can have up to 512 GB of RAM two socket 2011 cpus "Ivy Bridge e will be a socket 2011 part". Seven slots and seven drive bays. And while the build I did cost $21k+ it starts at under 3 thousand.

Link to HP OpenVMS Roadmap (PDF)
HP OpenVMS Roadmap

And they certainly knew their history:

http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/products/year-2000/leap.html :-)

Only that most of the products we use at work run on it. At home, I use a combination of Linux, Windows and Android. But there's no need to upgrade any of my current systems beyond Windows 7. I've tried Windows 8 and loathe it. The confusion between Apps and Programs, the mysterious tendency toward fixing things that weren't broken.

The next system I'm considering is the HP X2 Slatebook http://www8.hp.com/us/en/ads/x2/slatebook-x2.html . I'm already own a few Android phones and tablets, am more than happy that I can do what I need to with them. Having a real keyboard on one to me is a great idea.

I had the same requirements as 'timothy' and there really is very little on the market that meets them. I suspect all the sufficiently small HD screens are being snapped up by tablet manufacturers. It's a shame Apple seems to have banished USB pass-through apps, or the iPad + AirDisplay would make a nice choice. I looked at the AOC E2251Fwu, a "semi portable" product. Bit large for me, and the build quality and design don't suit me. This HP-U160 seemed cute, but is not HD, so I ruled it out. I eventually settled on the Wacom Cintiq 13HD It is actually designed for pen input, and is rather expensive because of this. Since I have also the occasional need to use a graphics tablet, it works okay for me. The only issue is that there's no decent portrait-mode stand for it yet. Makes coding less pleasant. Over all I'm satisfied with it though.

its not even a 500$ system in 2001 dumbshit

O RLY? HP Pavilion 6835; better CPU, less ram and considerably worse 3D acceleration compared to the Pi. Price was $699 without a monitor in 2001.

Know of any other games that made unusual use of ROM data?

It's a bad way to do things, compatability wise. Manufacturers could use different ROM data, even for identical models and revisions of computer.
On the other hand, a modern approach to security uses hardware fingerprints. That's basically the same idea, used for a purpose with fewer caveats.

there is both free and commercial AirPrint server software that can make any printer available to an iOS device..

I own an OfficeJet 4500, which is not AirPrint compatible. I checked the Wikipedia article you linked for more information about this "AirPrint server software" you mentioned, but the first footnote after "GNU/Linux" resulted in "Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at www.rho.cc". The second link works, but it's very complicated to set up. Furthermore, it mentions that it uses Avahi, and I've found that Avahi doesn't work if a Windows Server is on the same network because Windows Server's use of the .local top-level domain by default conflicts with Zeroconf.

> Afaict the largest DIMM of desktop memory* currently available is 8GB.
> * DDR3, unregistered non-ecc.

Depends how you define "desktop memory"

16 GB, and 32 GB sticks are "available" in extremely limited supplies

$360 Kingston 16GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 Desktop Memory Model KVR13LR9D4L/16
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239525

$1400 HP 627814-B21 32GB DDR3 SDRAM Memory Module
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820326202

Not sure if this counts as desktop memory ... (technically NewEgg lists it as Server Memory)
$1400 IBM 32GB DDR3 ECC Registered DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820135081

> I've seen systems that claim support for up to 2TB of ram.

The HP ProLiant servers support up to 2 TB with 64 DIMM slots. Only $10K for the mobo, the RAM will only cost you $90K :-)
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF04a/15351-15351-3328412-241644-3328422.html?dnr=1

But yeah, looks like we have to wait another 10 - 20 years before we start seeing "normal" desktop motherboards support more then 128 GB. The 4 or 8 DIMM sockets will be "good enough" for a long time.

I dont believe there is a workstation OS out there that has a longer service lifetime than Windows XP

OpenVMS 5.5 was supported for 21 years, and Solaris 10 for 16. I guess you can argue that Solaris is primarily a server-only OS these days, but VMS in early 90s was definitely used on VAX workstations as well as servers.

But far more significantly, Windows XP support is being withdrawn only 5 years after it ceased to be shipped preinstalled on any new consumer-grade machine. While that is not overly short by desktop OS standards, it is also not a figure to be bragged about.

RAIM memory system? Many of those RAS features are system level features anyway, so isolating CPU RAS features doesn't really do justice for either of them.

Function: to assure that ECC/chipkill failures on a memory controller/DIMM/bus can be worked around.

Its not "RAID" type functionality as such, but x86s have been doing mirroring for a long time.

Modern ones can do either mirroring and/or sparing or variations thereof depending on the machine vendor.

For example random google hit:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00502616/c00502616.pdf

The sparing is basically as efficient (2/3 available memory) as RAIM. Mirroring doesn't use the memory as efficiently as RAIM does, but I don't see IBM publishing Read/Modify/Write timings for their RAIM systems. Probably because its _NOT_ good, doing RAID in memory is going to affect the latency of the system, which is of course probably more critical in most applications than the bandwidth.

I have a z114 which supports this, I can probably benchmark it tomorrow with it on vs off. I don't think its turned on, but the main memory latency numbers by my measurement are pretty bad anyway so I didn't dig to deep into it.

I suspect that IBM added the RAIM functions because they were preparing for the the flash options on the ec12. It makes sense for flash because of the issues with flash reliability and the natural page mode access of flash could be aligned with the RAIM strip size.

I bought a $200 LED mini projector. It's only about 100 lumens, but it's pretty good and easily portable if I need to take it with my laptop.

The whole point of this is to run a lot of web and web application servers. I'll wait until I see the benchmarks considering the new Intel Atom processors are probably several orders of magnitude faster than the Transmeta chips HP tried last time. They also allow you to mix in not only X86 but also DSP, GPU and FPGU depending on your workloads. I'm certainly not sold on the whole concept, but I'm interested to see the benchmarks at least.

And yes HP, go back to making those shitty NonStop printers.

Subject: I want one or two

Start with a HP Proliant Microserver 40L: all in all, a 4 bay non-hotswap low power home NAS for about $200 (HDD-es not included) - or make it a media center, or whatever you fancy at that spec.
I reckon you can have one or two at that reasonable price.

Sounds sweet!!

Biggest advantage... the microserver does not sound at all... it's virtually silent

That's ignorant. The board of directors reflects the interests of the big shareholders such as Vanguard. Vanguard probably even has direct control over one of the members of the board. There we go. A Rajiv L. Gupta is a director of HP and of The Vanguard Group.

It's not magic how this works. Directors usually represent the interests of one or more large shareholders each and the large shareholders negotiate with each other to get enough votes for the entire board. The board got reelected because its purpose is to represent the interests of the large shareholders not to make decisions that appear competent to the outside world.

Local cloud? but then you want a mix of external and local cloud. lets call it... Converged Cloud!

i wonder where i heard that before...?
http://www8.hp.com/ca/en/business-solutions/solution.html?compURI=1079449#.UVW3wRyceo8

HP calls it OpenVMS now, their big Itanium boxes can run it, and Alpha version still supported till 2016:

http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/openvms_supportchart.html