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...just to make sure, Archon-X is referring to the emergency eject hole. There's a tiny hole on the front bezel of the CD/DVD drive, about half a centimeter under the tray. Here's the information for IBM Authorised Service Providers: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/iseries/v 5r3/index.jsp?topic=/rzar5/rzar5ommr.htm Aside from using this to "manually remove Optical media", insiders know you can also use it to "manually insert Optical media".

Is the Mainframe (and COBOL) Dead? ... No way!

Mainframes can (and often do) run Java & Linux via ZAAP (Hardware JVM) and IFL (Hardware Integrated Facility for Linux).

System Z (the latest IBM marketing name) is the best platform for transactional processing bar none. (Check the independent TCO studies). !

Factoids...
"200 Billion lines of COBOL code in existence" eWeek!
"5 Billion lines of COBOL code added yearly" Bill Ulrich, TSG Inc.!
"Between 850K and 1.3 Million COBOL developers" IDC
"Majority of customer data still on mainframes" Computerworld
"Replacement costs $20 Trillion" eWeek
Researchers at Aberdeen Group recently found that about 70% of the world's business data is still processed by mainframe applications written in Cobol. According to Gartner Group, that number is closer to 75%.


Links...
http://www.arcati.com/dinomyth.pdf
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php?id=19147 25230&rid=-500


Note: Universities are reintroducing COBOL to their IT Courses due to growing demand. See: http://courseprofile.cqu.edu.au/profile.jsp?course id=16508

Life gets better for the COBOL, PL/I or Assembler code cutter, IBM now have Eclipse based tools for editing, debugging, etc. on the mainframe (Eclipse runs in Wintel or Linux Desktop and it connects to you mainframe resources via TCP/IP). The tool even lets you generate / edit / manage z/OS JCL and execute batch jobs etc. (WebSphere Developer for Z)

CICS transaction can be deployed as a Web Service at a click of a button, which means that the traditional transaction processing engine can be easily integrated into the latest SOA based business processes.

"Although most people are blissfully unaware of CICS, they probably make use of it several times a week, for almost every commercial electronic transaction they make. In the whole scheme of things, CICS is *much* more important the Microsoft Windows." Martin Cambell-Kelly, "From Airline Reservations to Sonic Hedgehog" (a History of the Software Industry), MIT Press 2003

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/lpi/101.ht ml?S_TACT=105AGX45&S_CMP=LPLINUX and www.lpi.org

That's not "High Productivity Computing" Wire... the HPC in "HPC Wire" stands for High-Performance Computing.

The real story on the ~15PB/year data store is to be found in these two sites:

This outlines the hardware environment supporting the data (IBM 3584 w/ Ultrium and IBM DS4400):
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/common/ssi/rep_sp/n/GRC 03001USEN/GRC03001USEN.PDF

This outlines the software environment (layered Tivoli Storage Manager and dCache):
http://www.dcache.org/manuals/tsm-symposium-2005-p aper.pdf

Or is it?
Here, Sun posts how Storagetek supplied the tape storage:
http://www.sun.com/customers/storage/cern.xml

The LCG
Something could certainly be said about their computing backend of going through this data. It's called the LHC LCG (Large Hadron Collider Large Computing Grid) and is described here:
http://lcg.web.cern.ch/LCG/tdr/LCG_TDR_v1_04.pdf

I'd be more interested in a PocketPC implementation of the Metropolis keyboard layout. According to the IBM researchers who cam up with it, it can be be up to 20% faster than Fitaly (PDF). The paper is pretty interesting too, they used the Metropolis (hence the name) Monte Carlo method, random walking, Fitt's energy, and other techniques to came up with this optimized layout.

Interestingly, just like another poster already mentioned, I also felt like I'm inputting more text with letter/block recognition than with the regular keyboard, and it probably has to do with ultra fast stylus motions when drawing the symbols.

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/p/news/features/2007 /annc_0522.html

They may think they're doing a decent job, but this hard drive still needs defragmenting... :-p
http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/visual/projects/ chromogram/images/screenshot4.jpg

I am not sure if this is where the article originates from (or vice versa), but here is another example of visualizing Wikipedia:

http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/visual/projects/ chromogram.html

PowerPC G5 is a lightened Power4 chip. Yes that multi core, 64bit RISC CPU. That could give idea about the monsters mentioned on that story.

Not saying for you of course, telling for people who thinks about buying a Desktop based on Power6. I don't think such thing could happen except if IBM decides to update their "Real" Power Workstation http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/intellistation/power /285/ and CTIA is not essentially entertainment I guess. :)

If I were you, I'd really folllow http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/ and http://www.power.org/ , I suspect very interesting things on way with PS3 (!) Cell Processor. Soon or later I will have to switch YDL Linux anyway so keeping eye on stuff. I even begged for PowerPC Linux Flash from Adobe already :)

Yeah. It's called PERCS. - http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/pr.nsf/pages/n ews.20030710_darpa.html.

Press or say one to speak with a representative in english...

One

When you hear the option you are calling about you may say it at any time. If you are calling about a billing problem, say billing. If you are calling about a technical issue, say technical. If you are calling about new service, say new customer. If you are...

Billing

'these machines would have to be a little bit more robust than linux is capable of being at the moment'

What stability issue, and do you have an citations for major data loss because of the stability issue. Is IBM fibbing when it refers to its legendary stability.

'One of Linux's claims to fame is its legendary stability'

'Manufacturer moves to Linux for stability'

'As the manufacturer had already used Linux, it was aware of its great stability. SAP, combined with IBM and Linux offered the best deal in terms of price and performance

'Linux systems excel in many areas, ranging from end-user concerns such as stability, speed, and ease of use, to serious concerns such as development and networking'

hmm (in a story about the NYSE moving to Linux inject a little stability FUD)

I would recommend the following resources:

1. Technical Writing Textbook, free online, which covers the basics.

2. Writing Technical Papers, also free online, a good introduction to the process.

3. Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications, not free but very good on the details. Even if you hate Microsoft... they did a good job on this one. Maybe they did steal it from Apple. I don't know. I like this book.

4. IBM Style Guideliness, free on the web, see disclaimer above if AIX raped your dog.

5. Sun Style Guide, not free, but worthy. See disclaimer above if you call Solaris "Slowlaris."

I also maintain a blog called User Advocacy: Technical Writing and Technical Communications in which I detail links and other useful information for people wanting to get into technical writing.

For developers and others who want to explain things to people of varying technical ability, the skills of technical communications (the "new" name for technical writing) are invaluable. If you have any questions, please contact me through the profile link above.

"Transaction cost" is a common metric in the financial-processing world; rather than just talking about cost-per-quarter, they take the cost of the equipment and then divide it out by the number of transactions they process.

It's not the greatest metric in the world, but it does provide some ability to compare "efficiency" across systems. But it's a little misplaced in all but the most predictable workloads, because it's not like your operating costs are really going to fluctuate with the number of transactions you process that day. The system is basically going to cost the same amount regardless; if you process fewer transactions, the CPT just went up even though nothing on the systems side changed. But for someone like the NYSE where the overall number of transactions is predictable, it's probably not a bad way to compare options.

More on CPT. (Incidentally I think it was people looking to stabilize CPT that led to the interest a while back about 'metered computing,' where you'd outsource your IT stuff to someone and basically get a bill at the end of the month, and your bill really would reflect the workload that month, basically giving you a flat cost-per-transaction. Apparently this is very attractive to some people due to their accounting methods, although maybe not enough to sell them on it.)

Here are some of IBM's non-Unix mainframe OSs. http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/os/. They could be using some other vendor as well.

As somebody that has used OpenVZ, VMware (several flavors, since the early beta days), QEMU, Bochs, Linux-VServer, and others, I like OpenVZ (and VMware Server but for totally different reasons). I looked at Xen and decided that I would grow old setting it up, so I abandoned that effort, for now.

OpenVZ is easy to setup (once you get the kernel and packages setup, which is a breeze in Debian 3.1 and 4.0). It runs ridiculously fast, it consumes little memory, and takes little disk space (which can be further enhanced using hard links). Besides that, everything is fully scriptable. I also only have to maintain a single kernel (on the host).

By reducing isolation (jails/containers vs. virtualization), the host machine can directly copy files into and out of guests, but the guests can't directly see each other (you can through ssh, for instance).

I also like the fact that on the host machine, using ps -ef (or ps aux) gives you information on ALL processes, whether host or guest. The tty column shows you which machine owns a process.

Since it's a shared kernel and uses shared memory, resource utilization is superior. If a guest isn't doing anything, it really isn't doing anything at all, unlike the virtualizers (except the up-and-coming KVM). The virtualized machines, for instance, keep running the "do nothing loop" when the OS is idle. (I believe that VMware Tools is supposed to help a bit in this regard). And, if processes aren't running or disk space isn't being used, then, unlike VMware, resources aren't being consumed.

This is basically a way to run multiple guest Linuxes under a host, not a full virtualization environment, so there are trade-offs. I think that for running multiple Linux servers (as opposed to desktop apps), OpenVZ/Virtuozzo is an ideal solution.

Since I'm running a smallish server at home, I've found that OpenVZ is the best way to run so many Linux guests at once.

I will have to say that I have not tried UML because of performance. I can't try KVM since I don't have the correct AMD processors.

I was also initially impressed by Linux-VServer but got stuck, somewhere, but I cannot remember where. I found that OpenVZ seemed to be easier and more powerful than Linux-VServer, its virtualization cousin.

Here's a decent comparison of the kinds of VM's available for Linux:
    http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/librar y/l-linuxvirt/?ca=dgr-lnxw01Virtual-Linux

I really like OpenVZ and will be glad to put in a plug for it. Try howtoforge.com for some great help on setting up....

Microsoft patents that Linux infringes on almost certainly include their patent of file system symlinks, which have been in Unix systems since the seventies, as well as a slew of other very obvious inventions, none of which have been tested in court. Getting a patent granted, as denizens of Slashdot are all too well aware, seems to be the easy part. Validating those patents in a court of law may be a little more difficult, especially when one of the supporters of linux, might have a patent portfolio that would push Balmer from chair throwing to crying uncle.

There is a lot of talk about getting rid of patent trolls, but little consensus as to what a patent troll is. Very few companies will say "yes: we're patent trolls." At best, they're willing to tolerate being called patent trolls.

What makes a patent troll? Does a company that develops a new technology but licenses it because it does not have the capital or market position to exploit the technology count as a patent troll? What about IBM? They produce products, but they license their patents for use by others in products that don't compete with IBM's products. Does that make IBM a patent troll? Would they have to be making competing products to be on morally solid ground?

There are definitely companies out that abuse the patent system (e.g., by filing continuation applications or requests for reexamination during which the applicants try to stretch the claims of their patents to read on subsequent innovations). But this author has a point that distinguishing the bad guys from the good guys is not easy. Many companies out there see themselves as just legitimately trying to leverage their full rights. Is that significantly different from consumers trying to maximize their rights as consumers by engaging in activities that aren't clearly legal (e.g., using direct music and movie clips for new works without seeking permission, creating libraries of MP3s and copying them to multiple systems, etc.).

Activities that push the limits of the law create risk. Patent applicants pay significant fees and must spend a lot of time in their efforts, resulting in a guaranteed loss. Certain uses of a patent can raise anti-trust concerns or result in loss of the patent. Consumers pushing the boundaries of "fair use" often play a lottery in which the winner loses a nasty law suit. And there is always the risk that Congress or the courts may react by changing the law or interpretation of the law to minimize questionable activities.

But those who are engaged in those activities probably believe that all they are doing is playing by a valid interpretation of the rules.

IBM Global Service delivers on (at least) one of IBM's three Basic Beliefs[1]: "Service to the Customer," also expressed in the slogan IBM Means Service.

IBM left the service business entirely when it sold its Service Bureau Corporation subsidiary to CDC in 1973 and agreed not to re-enter the market for a period after that. (CDC, for its part, agreed not to pursue antitrust claims against IBM. CDC was the only company with which IBM settled. Every other case was dropped, or saw IBM prevail in court. One can only wonder what the CDC lawyers came across during the voluminous discovery process.)

IGS is IBM's re-entry into the services market following the settlement with CDC.

[1]Under Lou Gerstner the three Basic Beliefs were replaced with eight principles. Each principle contained a conjunction, for a total of 16 items. Sizteen being somewhat larger than seven, I never tried to memorize them.

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/138 8.wss

IBM claims that Hollerith (the IBM germany subsidiary that supplied and serviced the equipment) was taken over by the German government when the war started. If you have proof showing otherwise, please provide it.

And of course, if you have proof showing that employees of IBM today were involved, please provide that too. If not, then please STFU already about it, because if you live in the USA then you too have profited from a genocide in the past.

It's not outsourcing, it's incompetence. My opinion: If you read the links carefully, you will get the impression that IBM is an incompetent company run by someone with no technical knowledge. Death is normal for an incompetent corporation.

Links: General information: IBM Employee.com.

Cringley: "... the executive ranks from CEO Sam Palmisano on down were losing touch with reality, bidding contracts too low to make a profit then mismanaging them in an attempt to make a profit anyway..."

IBM employee: "They just cut nearly half our team Tuesday, wtihout even notifying the customer (Who is going apeshit). And 40% is indeed the workforce reduction I've heard bandied about." That comment is anonymous, of course. However, that fits with my experience, which is that IBM is an amazingly incompetent company. The incompetence has been there for a LONG time. Remember, IBM lost more than $2 Billion on OS/2, which in the beginning was fundamentally better than the competition from Microsoft.

IBM is run by a technically ignorant CEO: Samuel J. Palmisano is a technically ignorant CEO: "He holds a Bachelor's degree in history..." Note that his official IBM biography carefully avoids mentioning anything that would give a true picture of his incompetence.

I don't think the IBM layoffs are about outsourcing. They seem to be only about incompetence. Only technically ignorant managers contract with IBM, a company run by someone as ignorant as they are.

Also, I don't think outsourcing is working. U.S. companies get an EXTREMELY bad reputation when calls are answered by an under-trained person who can't speak English. Outsourcing is more an abuse of people outside the U.S. by U.S. managers than it is a way to get things done, apparently. Outsourcing call centers is a very effective way to sell customers on the competition, if the competition has competent employees.

Look at the web sites of any online bank. They are stupid, stupid, and purposely stupid. After people in India learn how to write good banking software, magically some company owned by an Indian will have the best banking software.

There is only one reason for outsourcing. Non-technical managers want the technical responsibility as far away from themselves as possible. It is dishonesty only.

Walk down any street in India and ask yourself: Why are people in India so poor? They are poor because their culture is extremely self-defeating. No matter how well an Indian who is first- or second-generation educated is trained technically, he is still guided mostly by his culture.

The claimed cost savings are not there. They simply are not there. The "cost savings" come from situations like this:

1) It is cheaper to hire Indians for a sloppy, poorly defined project than it is to hire people in the U.S. for a sloppy, poorly defined project, and the result is the same.

2) Many top managers today are like kings. They have complete control, can be as destructive as they want to their company and to other people, and are very ignorant. So when it comes time for a technical improvement that will be a lot of work, and require a lot of responsibility and decision-making, moving the entire project 10,000 miles away seems attractive. The distance offers lots of excuses, and it just doesn't matter to the king how much money is wasted. The "cost savings" are what the king says they are.

We are going through a time in which most managers of technically-oriented companies know nothing about technical issues, and don't want to know anything.

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/491 .wss

I didn't work for PwC at the time of this occuring but I do work for them now. I know it wasn't viewed very well at the time but this makes PwC leadership look like fucking geniuses for making the right call 5 years ago.

You can read the article here:

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/153 7.wss

That was 7 years ago. Just before I left. They outsourced my department to IBM Global Services. My former coworkers are probably (once again) now worried for their jobs. After reapplying / downsizing mania at least 3 times already, it's got to be getting old.

I'm happy as hell that I took my months of severance pay and went skipping merrily down the road to a better job at higher pay.

Seems I tend to agree somewhat with one of the more offensive posters:

1. Whatever I read on /., the 'daily reboots' of Linux isn't exactly what I remember w.r.t. your 'lots of comments'.

2. If that chap asked a question, why cite what you (wrongly, as is) think that others were saying ? Instead of giving your own opinion and experience ?

3. Finally, it's well known that Linux is not yet ready to used be an 'enterprise' OS with heavy DB access.
Is there somehow anything that you know about databases, or are you back in the mere realms of assumption ? The largest databases ('enterprise') could be running DB2 or Oracle. Miraculously, both run on Linux:
http://www.oracle.com/technologies/linux/index.htm l
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/db2/linux/

Many vendors, including IBM, would be happy to sell you such a contract for a Linux based system. In fact, I'd be very surprised if Qantas didn't already had such a contract for their Linux based system.

Linux is a low end product for IBM, it is useful to get you into the *NIX family. Once there, they can upgrade you to the higher end platform, AIX.

"Most of the major differences between Linux and AIX stem from the fact that while Linux is well suited to running a interdepartmental server or even a small to medium sized Internet site, it lacks many of the features required to make it suitable for large scale systems. These issues are being addressed by Linux developers, but at the present, Linux is still best suited for less demanding tasks and really large, mission critical applications may be better served by AIX."

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/ibm/library/ it-schenk1/schenk3.html

I guess you read the original report from ibm.

http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/people/dmodha/rj1040 4.pdf

besides this whole discussion about which physical molde our brain's based on... didnt you guys miss anything in the report?
it says that the team "observed biologically consistent dynamical proporties such as spontaneous formation of neuronal groups and synchronous/asynchronous firing patterns".

what did the latest test say?

Here is the secret IBM database. All the kernel calls, error messages, programming information, command line, as well as procedures for managing your system. AIX is better documented than Linux or Windows, as far as I can tell. Solaris used to have a pretty good doc set, but I haven't used it in a while.

Couldn't they at least switch to a real UNIX?

Um, AIX is certified by the Open Group as UNIX 03 compliant. I don't think it gets more "real UNIX" than that.

Also, AIX 5L is supposed to be compatible with Linux. All it needs is a recompile. Not exactly copying files over, but about as close as you can reasonably expect.

Couldn't they at least switch to a real UNIX?

Um, AIX is certified by the Open Group as UNIX 03 compliant. I don't think it gets more "real UNIX" than that.

Also, AIX 5L is supposed to be compatible with Linux. All it needs is a recompile. Not exactly copying files over, but about as close as you can reasonably expect.

That's why it's a good idea for them. Sounds to me like they're having genuine problems, if they moved to Windows Server 2003 complete with a crowing from Microsoft Headquarters, that might be something to worry about, but I doubt IBM has anything to gain from them moving from Linux to AIX, both of which they have a substantial amount of investment in.

And no, AIX is not dead, not any more than BSD is anyway.

Well, it boils down to a subjective determination either way, but the difference IMO is that the Macbooks look pretty "square," overall, in terms of being composed of straight lines, only with beveled edges to take off the sharp points. The Dells, on the other hand, not only have rounded corners but also seem to have some rounded design elements too (particularly right in front, although I suppose this is intended as a wrist rest) and this is emphasized by the two-tone plastic.

I admit that I'm probably biased, since I find the Macbooks more attractive overall, but when I just try to concentrate on "squareness" and "cleanness," the Dell seems to be lacking something that the Macbook has.

Anyway, to each his/her own. At the end of the day it's probably like comparing wristwatches or other objects that are fundamentally a combination of function and image.

Dell: http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetail s.aspx/inspn_1501?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19 (Inspiron series)
Apple: http://www.apple.com/macbook/macbook.html and http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/
IBM/Lenovo: http://www-05.ibm.com/se/news/archive/images/compu ters/thinkpad/ThinkPad_T30/TH008889.jpg (this is the older IBM design) http://www.notebookreview.com/assets/9513.jpg (the newer "3000 series" Lenovo design, which looks like ass in comparison)

Personally I like the looks of the old-school IBMs most of all, just because they seem to have really followed the form-follows-function approach and the geek in me appreciates that; but the Apple ones are admittedly very sleek.

On the whole ... the Dells just radiate mediocre, and that's the last thing I'd want to project as an image.

Those charts look pretty hot to me. Did you look at the chart in the page? http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/l ibrary/os-perlgdchart/pie_step1_step2.gif
). Anti-aliased lines and text :]

Let's compare this to what I'd get if I asked most professionals for a chart. (These were the first ones from google). The lack of anti-aliasing hurts one's eye, these all look like they're from 1995.
http://support.alphasoftware.com/images/XD_Interac tive_Pie_Chart.gif
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa192481. odc_vststockallocation2003_fig03(en-us,office.11). gif
(the second one is 3d)

And in response to your comment
> When will open source advocates learn to delegate the graphic design aspect of their work to professionals? if only the programming types in charge of these projects would admit they're better at making code than graphics.
You seem to have missed the point. The article is about free software that can be used by professional and non-professional alike to create some hot graphics. Perhaps you're referring to the ugliness of the original tux logo? It's not 1995, and developers aren't resigned to producing their own graphics. If you look all free software houses pushing their brand use professional designers. Think of the firefox logo (2004)
http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/branding-fire fox
or of ubuntu and gnome's curves, and check out the tango project http://tango.freedesktop.org/
Desktop linux has never looked so sexy.

Why so sour, AC?

Disclaimer: I work for IBM.

Tivoli can do this plus a bunch of other things. Cross platform support too.

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/pr ov-mgr/

It's not, but some compilers have options to add bounds checking in the compiled output. Usually this is done for testing then the code is compiled for release without the bounds checking. Also, there are tools like Purify that also can do bounds checking and the like.

• XI50: transforming between disparate message formats, including binary, legacy, and XML,
• XS40: WS-Security, XML encryption, XML/SOAP firewall filtering, XML digital signatures, XML schema validation, two-way SSL, XML access control, XPath
• XA35: processing XML, XSD, XPath and XSLT

Actually, IBM has been working in this field already. Check this: http://redmonk.com/cote/2006/10/06/redmonk-radio-e pisode-27-games-and-mainframes-hoplon/ and IBM's press release: http://www-03.ibm.com/industries/media/doc/content /news/pressrelease/1551338111.html Essentially, Z Series Mainframes + Linux + MMORPG. Personally, I've always wondered why more MMORPGs are not run on mainframes, considering all the points you illustrated: Scalable, parallel, huge uptime, etc.

Then again, there's always Tivoli.

IBM has been talking this up for a while. The idea is to offload some "streaming stuff" onto the Cell processors. The phrase "XML acceleration" has been used, which probably means the Cell gets the job of taking some DB2 result and pumping it out in XML. It's also useful for SSL encryption and other related streaming-type tasks.

This is a traditional IBM transaction processing approach. The mainframe is surrounded by lesser machines which handle the communications and formatting, extract the transaction which needs access to the data, ships that to the mainframe, gets a result back, and then formats a reply to the requestor. In the green-screen terminal era, that was done by dedicated hardware. In the web era, too much of that work moved onto the mainframe itself.

Think of this usage of the Cell as offloading the front half of Apache to peripheral processors. When your AJAX app makes an XMLHttpRequest, the idea is that the front-end machines get the request, decode it, wait until it's complete, then pass one single transaction to the mainframe. A single reply comes back, is reformatted as XML, and is shipped out to the client. The number of events processed by the mainframe goes way down, and all the protocol work is offloaded to the low-cost Cell machines with tiny memories.

Has nothing to do with gaming, though. They're not putting the PS3's GPU (from NVidia) on mainframes.

Still only 256KB (not MB) per Cell CPU, though. That's too small. Just cramming the whole protocol stack in there will fill most of the memory. I think this thing will really start to fly when IBM gets up to a 2-4MB per Cell CPU. Then you'll be able to fit the front-end processing for a web server in the Cell. Until then, it's a niche product.

Two of the best resources out there are: IBM Developerworks LPI certification preparation material: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/lpi/ VCampus preparation material: http://www.vcampus.com/lpinama

I hate to break it to you, troll, but "M$" is getting nailed by the very system you claim they enjoy. Ever heard of Eolas? I'd really appreciate it if you showed us a single instance of Microsoft (oh, "M$") using a patent offensively. That does not include FAT32, which is about as common a licensing scheme as it comes in the hardware world.

Microsoft plays the game the same way IBM and everyone else does to protect themselves from the patent trolls. The system is broken. Constantly harping on why "M$ is teh bad" like Stallman is not going to help much.

The IBM System p(TM) server family and the IBM BladeCenter® JS21 blade server are packed with features designed to enable you to achieve lower costs and more flexibility, as well as have the peace of mind that comes from knowing your applications are available when you need them. Our leadership performance saves you money by providing exceptional performance per processor core and including up to 4 cores per socket. Unique IBM virtualization technologies are designed to dramatically increase server utilization by providing innovative capabilities that enable one server to act like many--while giving you the ability to automatically move more processing power to critical applications when needed. You can meet known and unknown processing requirements with fewer servers -- so hardware, software and facility costs go down. Finally, your Linux® applications on these systems will be available when you need them thanks to time-tested IBM reliability features.

The source link in the blog is bad. Here's the actual IBM announcement:

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/214 24.wss

Just a friendly suggestion to slashdot editors: why do you often post to other blogs with links to links to source material instead of directly posting the source material? That's not news it's meta-news. I can understand crediting the folks who brought it to your attention, but it's nice to see the source for myself.

Don't link to a blog looking for ad impressions.
The crappy blog even has the link to IBM's page wrong.

Here is the real article.

At the bottom are some good details:

"All application components and plug-ins must meet these qualifications. Support for x86 Linux applications requires an Red Hat 4 update 4 or Novell SLES 9 with Service Pack 3 of the Linux operating system."

your condescension and use of the word "modern enough" is getting annoying. core duo chips are less than 18 months old, so enough with the snobbery.

A PowerMac G5 with a 970FX is a more modern machine than one with the original 970, and this "New Product Focus" note seems to indicate that the 970FX was the first 970 to support changing the clock speed and voltage on the fly, so, if you want to have the OS able to adjust the processor speed (or the processor able to adjust its speed spontaneously), and you have a machine with the original 970, you'll need a more modern machine. The 970FX PowerMac G5 machines are about 34 months old....

total bunk, that was only 3 powermac revisions ago.

OK, it's not a sufficiently modern Macintosh. The PowerMac G5 family is almost 4 years old. The 970FX supports frequency scaling (see the IBM PowerPC 970FX RISC Microprocessor User's Manual), but I can't find any user's manual for the earlier 970's, so I don't know whether they support it as well. If they don't, you're out of luck, and need to get a more modern machine.

I also don't know whether it would be possible to switch off individual processors in an MP 970 machine. Given that your machine isn't modern enough to have multiple processor cores on a single die, that's presumably what you meant by "1 core".