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Seems to me that the ideal headset:
* has dual high-res cams located above the eyes, or quad cams above and below, which can 'average' out to eye level
* Is translucent/transparent with an electrochromic backplate
* has pupil sensors on the inside
* is wireless, perhaps with a battery 'pendant' that incorporates some UWB connection to the host computer
* integrated mic on the bottom of the goggle frame as well as noise-cancelling mic on top
* face cams can recognize fingertips, physical cues (like a laser mouse) to handle fine head orientation
* possibly incorporate hardware neural net coprocessors for support features as well as image/pattern recognition

Awhile back, hopefully suitable for 600+dpi displays:
http://www.oled-info.com/trans...

And a consumer level version of this might be cool:
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us...

All other major unix server vendors ditched sysv init for the same reasons as I state long ago.

That's interesting. I looked up AIX, and it looks like they still have init with an inittab. And So does Solaris. From what I can tell, your claim that major Unix vendors have moved on from the traditional init system is also false.

Those Solaris documents linked relate to Solaris 9, which is pretty much EOL by now (goes mostly end of support thios month).

Solaris 10 included SMF (Service Management Framework) when it was released nearly ten years ago, and unfortunately SMF is an init system replacement.

Except that RC init wasn't fine. More than a few times over the years I've had a service that wouldn't start right on a server that actually prevented boot! Whether it was some stuck PID file that wasn't properly erased on boot, or some other race condition (often a network condition, or a chicken/egg problem),

...it was actually an init script problem, and not a problem with sysvinit at all. Your init script must not assume that /tmp has been cleared before run. When it finds a PID file, it must not blindly trust it. This sort of problem would be readily solved by simply unifying init scripts based on some sort of well-crafted template, but instead we have a daemon to fix the problem.

Ideally none of this should ever happen, but it did. Bugs are there.

Explain how systemd prevents bugs.

Combine that with the fact that init scripts are huge, fragile, hacks

Let's take a look at your three claims.

First claim, init scripts are huge. No, most init scripts are quite small. Sometimes they source a library, but there's nothing wrong with that. The replacement (systemd+unit files+required libraries) is still larger than (sysvinit+init scripts+script libraries). So this claim is clearly false.

Second claim, init scripts are fragile. Init scripts are not fragile. Some people are very lazy scripters. Some init scripts are well-written and they are fault-tolerant. Some init scripts are not well-written, and distribution maintainers should have remodeled them after ones which were. Distributions should have solved this problem by unifying init scripts. I have made the point elsewhere that a simple hashbang and shell script-based processor could permit using unit files as shell scripts, at least for long-running daemons. So this claim is also false.

Third claim, init scripts are hacks. Shell scripting is a central feature of Unix. Therefore, init scripts are not hacks. This claim is also false.

Everything you have claimed about init scripts is false.

As a system administrator I'd far rather mess with a simple ini file to create services than hack a huge bash script,

As a system administrator I'd far rather mess with a simple script file than have to debug the system that's supposed to interpret the unit files. With a shell script, I can simply run the script with -x and see precisely what is happening, even if all I have is a command line and 80x25. With a daemon interpreting a file, I may be lucky enough to get useful information out of strace, or I may have to load a debugger to actually see why my daemon isn't starting.

All other major unix server vendors ditched sysv init for the same reasons as I state long ago.

That's interesting. I looked up AIX, and it looks like they still have init with an inittab. And So does Solaris. From what I can tell, your claim that major Unix vendors have moved on from the traditional init system is also false.

Systemd has been in production a fairly long time now, and I see no issues at all brought up about it in actual practice.

Either you haven't been following the discussions here on Slashdot on this subject, or you are a liar. There have been numerous examples in these threads by actual systems administrators who have encountered actual problems with systemd. So while your claim might be true, it points only to your ignorance due to inexperience and lack of investigation.

Uselessd is a validation of the systemd approach. They clearly also believe that init is broken, or they wouldn't be working on the uselessd fork.

This is also false. They believe that systemd is broken, which is why t

Sure. Nobody's ever done work on that idea. And our government would never sponsor work on it.

Get with the times. It's a matter of engineering at this point. Sitting down and doing the work. Yes, it's slow. Yes, there are remaining issues. Yes, it can be done.

Since when did Linux become known for stability and avoidance of latest/greatest? When exactly was it that Linux became a legacy style OS? Linux has generally seen itself as quite progressive. In fact all of Unix has.

You would be much happier with: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/...

PowerPC is really a stripped down POWER processor, and modern PowerPC code can run on POWER architecture systems unmodified - it's machine language compatible.

I don't think that's the case. Check Appendix F of IBM's "PowerPC User Instruction Set Architecture, Book I" and you will find a list of new PowerPC instructions that are not implemented in POWER.

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/systems/library/es-archguide-v2.html

Flat mirrors, maybe

Which is what this thing uses.

Nope

Follow the links
http://www.research.ibm.com/la...

The inside of the parabolic dish is covered with 36 elliptic mirrors made of 0.2-millimeter-thin recyclable plastic foil with a silver coating,
which are then curved using a slight vacuum.

http://www.airlightenergy.com/...

A new ultra-high concentration 12 KWel – 20 KWth unit, currently under development, jointly with IBM research Zurich.
The system implements a multi-mirror parabolic dish topology (40 m2 active surface area) and will achieve concentrations beyond 2,000 suns.

Some say 12KWh/day electric cause of the cascading failure of non-engineering descriptions.
I say 100KWh/day electric and 160KWh/day thermal, (it's a beast).
Quoted 12KW electric and 20KW thermal output.
Some math: 40 m2 * 80% * 1KW/m2 = 32KW (consistency check: yep that's 12KW+20KW)
Assume 8hr/day near maximum input because it's tracking the sun.

ALSO: 40m2 area is about 7m diameter.
If you had one in your backyard to run your home:
4m diameter: 30KWh/day el and 50KWh/day th. That's a big big house with many kids (you're Xtian right?)
3m diameter: 17KWh/day el and 28KWh/day th. That's a good fit for most families
2m diameter: 7.5KWh/day el and 12KWh/day th. That's a good fit for singles.

I am curious as to why you would think a poorly written article in Computerworld points to even the slightest indication of 'incompetent project management' or 'absolute fraud'. If I write 'Bill Gates wrote the Linux kernel in PERL' does that mean that the Linux project management is completely incompent, or, more likely, absolute fraud? Or does it just mean I am an idiot?

This is an article in Computerworld written by some hack who took an IBM press release and completely rewrote it introducing all kinds of errors not present in the original (such as the idiotic units). It is not a submission to a scientifc journal or some such.

A little critical thinking goes a long way, and you seem to not have any.

Glad to see so much interest on Slashdot for our sunflower. I'd like to address a few misunderstandings and share with you how YOU can test one of our systems in your home town. 1. The standard commercial system will be available in 2017 for both heat and electricity, the water desalination will come later. 2. This presentation explains the science behind the sunflower and how it can also provide cooling: http://www.zurich.ibm.com/pdf/... By means of a thermally driven sorption chiller, cool air can also be produced. A sorption chiller is a device that converts heat into cooling via a thermal cycle applied to a liquid or solid sorption material. Adsorption chillers, with solid silica gel adsorbers and with water as a working fluid, can replace compression chillers, which place a burden on electrical grids in hot climates and contain working fluids that are harmful to the ozone layer. Although absorption (liquid sorption) systems are already available for combination with the HCPVT system, they provide less cooling output compared to low-temperature driving heat for the adsorption (solid sorption) systems under development at IBM. The systems can also be customized with a transparent back for urban installations. 3. This presentation highlights the regions and the commercial applications: http://www.zurich.ibm.com/pdf/... 4. Here is a YouTube video showing the prototype in Biasca, Switzerland http://youtu.be/JVB9_3IKIAE 5. The news was announced at a TED conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. You can watch the presentation here: http://fora.tv/2014/09/23/Solv...

Glad to see so much interest on Slashdot for our sunflower. I'd like to address a few misunderstandings and share with you how YOU can test one of our systems in your home town. 1. The standard commercial system will be available in 2017 for both heat and electricity, the water desalination will come later. 2. This presentation explains the science behind the sunflower and how it can also provide cooling: http://www.zurich.ibm.com/pdf/... By means of a thermally driven sorption chiller, cool air can also be produced. A sorption chiller is a device that converts heat into cooling via a thermal cycle applied to a liquid or solid sorption material. Adsorption chillers, with solid silica gel adsorbers and with water as a working fluid, can replace compression chillers, which place a burden on electrical grids in hot climates and contain working fluids that are harmful to the ozone layer. Although absorption (liquid sorption) systems are already available for combination with the HCPVT system, they provide less cooling output compared to low-temperature driving heat for the adsorption (solid sorption) systems under development at IBM. The systems can also be customized with a transparent back for urban installations. 3. This presentation highlights the regions and the commercial applications: http://www.zurich.ibm.com/pdf/... 4. Here is a YouTube video showing the prototype in Biasca, Switzerland http://youtu.be/JVB9_3IKIAE 5. The news was announced at a TED conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. You can watch the presentation here: http://fora.tv/2014/09/23/Solv...

The UK press release is more informative.

https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/40912.wss
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/uk/en/pressrelease/44972.wss

There's also a video of a TED@IBM talk (which I haven't watched)
http://fora.tv/2014/09/23/Solving_the_Energy_Crisis_One_Sunflower_at_a_Time

The UK press release is more informative.

https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/40912.wss
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/uk/en/pressrelease/44972.wss

There's also a video of a TED@IBM talk (which I haven't watched)
http://fora.tv/2014/09/23/Solving_the_Energy_Crisis_One_Sunflower_at_a_Time

Or how about 4 different atoms (say Fe, Co, Ni and Cu) on a substrate to represent the 4 different amino acids? The tech certainly is there - http://www.research.ibm.com/articles/madewithatoms.shtml#fbid=RiKFxiFL-GI

"...access to a mainframe system"....

Well, there is more than one kind of mainframe, and they aren't much alike. But let's assume you really mean IBM zSeries. You have several options:

1) Take a course. Many schools have IBM sponsored classes with access provided.
2) Find a copy of the "Hercules" emulate http://www.hercules-390.org/
3) Sign up for ANY university class to become a "student" and apply to IBM http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/...

Also note the growing popularity of Linux on zSeries systems, so your Linux skills can be directly applied.

They're not the only ones. The IBM mainframes have long been VMs implemented on top of various microcode platforms.

But the microcode implemented part or all of an interpreter for the machine code; the instructions weren't translated into directly-executed microcode. (And the System/360 Model 75 did it all in hardware, with no microcode).

And the "instruction set" for the microcode was often rather close to the hardware, with extremely little in the way of "instruction decoding" of microinstructions, although I think some lower-end machines might have had microinstructions that didn't look too different from a regular instruction set. (Some might have been IBM 801s.)

So that's not exactly the same thing as what the Pentium Pro and successors, the Nx586, and the AMD K5 and successors, do.

Currently mainframe processors, however, as far as I know 1) execute most instructions directly in hardware, 2) do so by translating them into micro-ops the same way current x86 processors do, and 3) trap some instructions to "millicode", which is z/Architecture machine code with some processor-dependent special instructions and access to processor-dependent special registers (and, yes, I can hear the word PALcode being shouted in the background...). See, for example, " A high-frequency custom CMOS S/390 microprocessor" (paywalled, but the abstract is free at that link, and mentions millicode) and "IBM zEnterprise 196 microprocessor and cache subsystem" (non-paywalled copy; mentions microoperations). I'm not sure those processors have any of what would normally be thought of as "microcode".

The midrange System/38 and older ("CISC") AS/400 machines also had an S/360-ish instruction set implemented in microcode. The compilers, however, generated code for an extremely CISCy processor - but that code wasn't interpreted, it was translated into the native instruction set by low-level OS code and executed.

For legal reasons, the people who wrote the low-level OS code (compiled into the native instruction set) worked for a hardware manager and wrote what was called "vertical microcode" (the microcode that implemented the native instruction set was called "horizontal microcode"). That way, IBM wouldn't have to provide that code to competitors, the way they had to make the IBM mainframe OSes available to plug-compatible manufacturers, as it's not software, it's internal microcode. See "Inside the AS/400" by one of the architects of S/38 and AS/400.

Current ("RISC") AS/400s^WeServer iSeries^W^WSystem i^WIBM Power Systems running IBM i are similar, but the internal machine language is PowerPC^WPower ISA (with some extensions such as tag bits and decimal-arithmetic assists, present, I think, in recent POWER microprocessors but not documented) rather than the old "IMPI" 360-ish instruction set.

The main differences between RISC and CISC, as I recall were lots of registers and the simplicity of the instruction set. Both the Intel and zSeries CISC instruction sets have lots of registers, though.

Depends on which version of the instruction set and your definition of "lots".

32-bit x86 had 8 registers (many x86 processors used register renaming, but they still had only 8 programmer-visible registers, and not all were as general as one might like), and they only went to 16 registers in x86-64. System/360 had 16 general-purpose registers (much more regular than x86, but that's not setting the bar all that high :-)), and that continues to z/Architecture, althoug

You've been able to run Linux on Power/ppc64 for over 10 years now.
Even Ubuntu runs on Power now.

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/group/tpl

I see increasing emphasis in the future on unconventional architectures to solve certain problems
http://www.research.ibm.com/ar...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q...

and a little further into the future, single molecule switches and gates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...

We have a ways to go, but at some point we are going to have to say bye-bye to the conventional transistor.

So, IBM wants to focus more on cloud computing yet sells of the very hardware (System x) on which my company operates their cloud. I wonder if the System x Enterprise (like the X6 line of servers) are also moving to Lenovo, since they're not quite that low-end.

"They're basically pulling an IBM."

Uh, yea... about that...

I'll send you my bill tomorrow.

Agree. PAM plus some usage guidelines and monitoring should be enough. Stuff like this http://www.ibm.com/developerwo... BTW It feels being like one of the torrent nodes backing up your encrypted files for you.

Maybe they have an EDU license? http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/...

I wonder if this means that Apple will finally port it's iOS management tools to run on something other than OS X server. Ever since Apple killed the XServe(and really even before that) this has been a major hinderance to wider scale enterprise adoption of iOS devices. The tools are actually quite good, but if you are forced to try to cram a bunch of mac minis somewhere or trying to get some mac pros in the server room, it's just a pain. Add to that lack of practical way to deploy OS X server instances on the cloud and you have enterprise customers just not interested in trying to screw around with iPhones. Hopefully this partnership will fix that.

They support third parties, a lot of which implement management on Windows and Linux servers.
http://www.enterpriseios.com/w...

IBM happens to be one of those vendors:
http://www-01.ibm.com/software...

I've actually had servers say that to me.

Usual cause: trying to execute certain commands while logged in as a user that no longer exists in /etc/passwd.

Also known as "oops I overwrite /etc/password!".

Bonus points if you get this while logged in a root. An associate of mine discovered that it's bad to use system variable names when he had this one in a script he ran (as root):
    deluser $USER

This summary is targeted towards more of a layman's audience. I would imagine most Slashdot readers know that a transistor is an electrical component and that current technologies like Intel's Broadwell chips are at 14 nm. Really the title gives all the necessary information sans the tech jargon business fluff. I guess the question is if some of IBM's money is going to help ARM again.

That's the gist of what D-Wave's designers were complaining about.

Here's an interesting work published by IBM that looks at some particularly hard problems

https://www.ibm.com/developerw...

Instruction set, the set of instructions. ISA, the part of the architecture which handles the instruction set.

Who, other than you, uses that definition of ISA? Intel doesn't, as per my previous post. IBM doesn't, either, and neither does ARM, nor does AMD, nor does Sun^WOracle, for example; they're all using "instruction set architecture" as "instruction set", with "architecture" perhaps given to signify that the instruction set is not just a characteristic of a particular processor, it's something that's specified separately from particular implementations of the instruction set.

Just the decode and encode stages of the CPU

So what does the "encode" stage of a CPU do? Take various internal chip signals and write out instructions to memory?

But originally, the ISA was defined by the very architecture of the processor, and it related directly to the architecture of the underlying processor.

If you mean "in the very early days of computers, the connection between the instruction set and the design of the CPU was straightforward", that might be true, but, dating at least back to the IBM System/360, the same instruction set was implemented by extremely different internal processor designs in many families of computers.

From a law firm (biased, perhaps): http://consumerjusticegroup.co...
"Workers at IBM and at other microchip fabs, or "fabrication plants," are exposed to benzene and other toxic carcinogens that can cause birth defects, leukemia, and other serious, debilitating medical conditions. While "bunny suits" prevent dust, hair, and skin cells from coming into contact with microchips, too often not enough is done in microchip factories to prevent the person inside the suit from breathing dangerous cancer-causing chemicals like benzene and formaldehyde while at the workplace. Since 2000, IBM has faced lawsuits from more than 250 former microchip plant employees. And since 2000, IBM has worked to suppress scientific findings showing the increase of cancer incidences in their microchip plant workers."

And also:
"Life In The Plume: IBM's Pollution Haunts a Village"
http://www.syracuse.com/specia...
"But for much of its history, Big Blue routinely polluted its birthplace. Tons of industrial solvents used to clean computer parts were dumped down drains or leached from leaky pipes into the ground for years before environmental rules required that such "spills" be reported. In 2002, scientists discovered the ground was exacting its revenge: The large underground chemical plume was releasing gases into homes and offices in a 350-acre swath south of the plant. The main chemical was a liquid cleaning agent called trichloroethylene, or TCE, that has been linked to cancer and other illnesses. IBM took responsibility and launched a multimillion-dollar cleanup. At the same time, the company announced plans to sell the plant and to ship many jobs overseas. ... "We found out that IBM had two faces in this community," said Matt LaTessa, a barber whose shop is on Monroe Street in The Plume. "One was a nice face, beautiful, big buildings and a lot of jobs. But underneath they were rotten. They were poisoning us." ..."

Versus:

"MD Anderson Taps IBM Watson to Power "Moon Shots" Mission Aimed at Ending Cancer, Starting with Leukemia"
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us...
"MD Anderson's Oncology Expert Advisor powered by IBM Watson is designed to integrate the knowledge of MD Anderson's clinicians and researchers, and to advance the cancer center's goal of treating patients with the most effective, safe and evidence-based standard of care available. Starting with the fight against Leukemia, MD Anderson's Oncology Expert Advisor is expected to help MD Anderson clinicians develop, observe and fine-tune treatment plans for patients, while helping them recognize adverse events that may occur throughout the care continuum. The cognitive-powered technology is also expected to help researchers advance novel discoveries."

Although, consider:
"Eat For Health - The Anti-Cancer Diet"
https://www.drfuhrman.com/libr...

Also Vitamin D and iodine can help prevent cancer...

When I worked at IBM Watson as a software developer, part of that time my workstation was put in windowless old labs that has been used for who knows what... To his credit, my supervisor tried really hard to make sure the second lab had been fully renovated...

Someone from Switzerland who saw other windowless offices at Watson said all that would be illegal in Switzerland, to have people working in windowless rooms... Not sure what the Swiss lawas are on chemical exposure... Back then was when I thought a lot about how all fabs and related labs should be 100% roboticized on the production floor. Bunny suits in that sense are such a quaint 20th century idea...

You missed the point, regarding E.T.s --each such species (even if only one per hundred galaxies) represents yet another way that Nature would have found to build a brain that can host enough consciousness for self-recognition. With hundreds of billions of galaxies out there, one such type of brain per hundred galaxies would mean there are billions of ways to build such brains. And so I repeat, anyone who thinks "no variant of computer hardware will ever be able to do that" --especially when we are deliberately copying brain-designs into our computer hardware!-- is just not thinking clearly.

Related: IBM's DAISY: http://researcher.watson.ibm.c...

You have no idea what you are talking about. Most tapes are not written by people and put on a shelf. Most tapes are automatically managed by a tape library, such as this one (note that thing can store up to 900PB.) Read failures do not happen, because the library and host software together automatically count cycles and copy to a different tape when the cycles get too high, as well as detecting corrected errors and signalling when there is a problem with a tape.

z/OS, for instance, has a hierarchical storage manager where, by policy, data that is not accessed in certain period of time is moved first to slower (cheaper) disk, then to tape. Where I work, the 'to tape' time is about a month. In over 30 years of using such systems I have seen the 'DFHSM is recalling from tape' message many thousands of times, and I have never once encountered a situation where the recall failed or the data was corrupted. And the recall typically takes less than a minute.

It seems that most people on here only have experience with crappy home tape systems.

So let's do your contrasting with HDDs. That library holds up to 900PB, and uses 1.6kVA of power. It takes up 163 square feet of floor space. By my calculation, that would take over 1 million 1TB HDDs in a RAID array. How much floor space would that take? How much power would it use? How much heat would be generated?

If you have a lot of data, and do not need all of the data 'right this second', and (most importantly) have a system that can manage the data without causing the user to jump through hoops, tape makes an excellent solution. And that describes most large companies.

When I was trying to learn a more system level languages from higher level ones like Smalltalk, I found Makefiles to be archaic. I was delighted when IBM introduced what they called Configuration files on VisualAge C++ (PDF) (see Chapter3. An introduction to configuration files). It was easy to manage and the integration with the IDE was great (one of the first C++ IDEs I really liked). But the configuration files were hated by the people used to the Makefiles, it wasn't well received. As an newbie at that time with C++, I loved them, today I can tolerate Makefiles but they are more archaic now than before.

Bill

They have already picked the number for extended support $200 / yr. And mainframes are still being sold: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/... IBM released a new Z-Series chip 2 months back.

The NCPPR wasn't trying to get Tim Cook riled up....they were trying to make millions of stockholders aware that Al Gore, whom both the left and right recognize as a nutjob, is the board member driving some weird decisions at Apple, and that Tim is backing him.

That's a lot of nutjob conspiracy accusations without any evidence there. Dell has green initiatives, and I can without a doubt say Al Gore has nothing to do with them.

Al doesn't know the first thing about computers. And he's on the board of directors at Apple.

Dina Dublon knows nothing about software yet she's on the board of Microsoft. I daresay, most of IBM's board knows nothing about IT services. Having technical knowledge about a company's products isn't a requisite for most boards.

And he's working (and succeeding) at driving Apple board discussions away from how to make computing devices and into "how to fight climate change." He's shifting the company away from what they're good at into something new, and political.

Unless you are present and have firsthand knowledge of the Gore's interaction with Apple, you can't claim this.

"Hey! You guys hired Lisa, the former head of the EPA to be a decision maker at Apple. What sense does that make? What qualifications does she have to make decisions for a tech company?"

A simple Google search and Apple's announcement shows you that she's in charge of Apple's environmental programs. I would think that her job at the Environmental Protection Agency would qualify her for such a position.

Much too modern... http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/hist...

That's funny.

First link searching "Sybase ASE Manual" on Bing: http://manuals.sybase.com/onli...

Searching for "IBM DB/2 LUW manual" yielded:

https://www-304.ibm.com/suppor...
https://www-304.ibm.com/suppor...
http://www.ibm.com/support/doc...

As the first three results.

Unless you're using a different Bing it seems what you claim is mostly bull.

That's funny.

First link searching "Sybase ASE Manual" on Bing: http://manuals.sybase.com/onli...

Searching for "IBM DB/2 LUW manual" yielded:

https://www-304.ibm.com/suppor...
https://www-304.ibm.com/suppor...
http://www.ibm.com/support/doc...

As the first three results.

Unless you're using a different Bing it seems what you claim is mostly bull.

That's funny.

First link searching "Sybase ASE Manual" on Bing: http://manuals.sybase.com/onli...

Searching for "IBM DB/2 LUW manual" yielded:

https://www-304.ibm.com/suppor...
https://www-304.ibm.com/suppor...
http://www.ibm.com/support/doc...

As the first three results.

Unless you're using a different Bing it seems what you claim is mostly bull.

Have they recently acquired new executives that are hellbent on selling absolutely everything that isn't mainframes and $$$$$/hour consultants?

Yes, their previous CEO made a stupid goal of $20 operating EPS by 2015 and the new CEO seems to be hell bent on hitting that target, whether that's from an incentive program or ego talking I'm not sure.

Same thing. Only you are only looking at the numbers. The difference between a PC and a server is engineering. Server grade memory. RAID etc.

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/...

I was at Novell at the time during which the protocol basis for the commercial Internet was being decided. Novell was attempting to swing a deal with AT&T to get them to deploy a commercial network topology based on SPX/IPX; at the same time, Microsoft was attempting to get AT&T and Sprint, and whoever else they could get on board, to deploy a commercial network based on NetBIOS/NetBEUI.

It has been some time since I worked with both IPX and NetBEUI, but AFAIK they are single-segment protocols

Correct about NetBIOS and NetBEUI/NetBIOS Frames protocol or whatever you want to call it; incorrect about IPX, which is routable and is routed. And NetBIOS (the service) can also operate atop IPX as well as operating atop TCP/UDP.

based on broadcast.

Host/service-name-to-address lookup is done in NetBIOS Frames protocol using broadcasts. That's not the only way to do it with NetBIOS-over-TCP; it might not be the only way to do it with NetBIOS-over-IPX either.

(Terry, was Microsoft talking about using NBF? That probably deserved to die, for the reasons mentioned.)

I am looking at these. I really don't see anything that distinguishes it from a "normal" PC. I guess the three year onsite repair is something you don't normally get.

Ah well. A rose by any other name and all that.

IBM don't make PCs any more

That's funny, because I see them selling workstations and tower servers. Those are PCs.

Dell started 8 years after Apple (and after the Mac)

Dell traces its origins to 1984, when Michael Dell created PC's Limited while a student of the University of Texas at Austin. The dorm-room headquartered company sold IBM PC-compatible computers built from stock components.

Acer started 13 years after Apple (and after the Mac)

The Micro-Professor MPF-I, introduced in 1981 by Multitech (which, in 1987, changed its name to Acer)

NEC don't make PCs any more

Really?

Sony made their first PC 7 years after Apple (and after the Mac)

Really?

Cray never made PCs

"Every company that made computers when we started the Mac, they're all gone"

Fujitsu only started making PCs 14 years after Apple (and after the Mac)

In 1954, Fujitsu manufactured Japan's first computer, the FACOM 100, and in 1961 launched the transistorized FACOM 222.

FM-7

You mean global services and software, right? Because THAT is where the money is.

You mean until more customers realize that IBM (a/k/a India Business Machines) services and software is overpriced garbage, and that it's better to have it done in the US (often in-house) if quality is your concern, or to deal directly with India if lowest cost is what you want.

IBM used to be known as the company that nobody ever got fired for buying from. They were expensive, but their stuff worked damn well and their service was phenomenal. Nowadays they're just another ripoff whorehouse living on memories of a once great name. Customers will eventually catch on to that.

You mean global services and software, right? Because THAT is where the money is.

They still make a lot of software: http://www-01.ibm.com/software...

And I guess $1 billion of that sale will be used to finance their new $1 billion Watson division.

Lots of software: http://www-03.ibm.com/software... . Click on W-Z to see all their WebSphere brand products:

WebSphere Application Server
WebSphere Business Compass
WebSphere Cast Iron Cloud integration
WebSphere Bigboote ("It's big-boo-TAY! TAY!")
WebSphere Small Berries
WebSphere Lord Whorfin
WebSphere Many Jars
WebSphere Littlejohn
WebSphere O'Connor
WebSphere Parker
WebSphere . . . .

Is it fitting that IBM has one that would do a fine job?

Your example is pretty poor. IBM has Capacity on Demand systems. You pay to unlock processor cores and RAM as needed. The capacity is physically there all along. You simply have to pay to unlock it. I'm sure doing so yourself would violate the terms of the contract. I would guess it was the same with your old system too. If you felt otherwise, why didn't you simply tell them you changed your mind and they could place the cards back in the system and then remove them yourself later?

- 3D chips are decades old and have never materialized.

24-layer flash chips are currently produced by Samsung. IBM works on 3D chip cooling. Just because it "never materialized" before, doesn't mean it won't happen now.

- Memristors do not enable any new approach to computing, as there are neither many problems that would benefit form this approach, nor tools. The whole idea is nonsense at this time. Maybe they will have some future as storage, but not anytime soon.

Memristors are great for neural network (NN) modelling. MoNETA is one of the first big neural modelling projects to use memristors for that. I do not consider NNs a magic solution to everything, but you must admit they have plenty of applications in computation-expensive tasks.

And while HP reconsidered its previous plans to offer memristor-based memory by 2014, they still want to ship it by 2018.

- Photonics is a dead-end. Copper is far too good and far too cheap in comparison.

Maybe fully photonic-based CPUs are way off, but at least for specialized use there are already photonic integrated circuits with hundreds of functions on a chip.

- Spintronics is old and has no real potential for ever working at this time.

MRAM uses electron spin to store data and is coming to market. Application of spintronics for general computing may be a bit further off in the future, but "no potential" is an overstatement.

- Quantum computing is basically a scam perpetrated by some part of the academic community to get funding. It is not even clear whether it is possible for any meaningful size of problem.

NASA, Google and NSA, among others, think otherwise.

So, no. There really is nothing here.

I respectfully disagree. We definitely have something.

Deep Blue