Slashdot Mirror

Please, when you are bashing Lotus Notes, if it's the mail client you have issue with, try to state that. Saying you don't like Lotus Notes is like saying you had a bad experience with a car you owned in college, therefor all cars suck !

If you don't like the mail client, use Outlook instead, the servers have IMAP and POP.
If your apps suck, thank a developer (I guess if a VB app you used once sucked, that would mean all computers suck or something?).
Red Box of Death ? Try moving to a version from this MILLENNIUM !

Letsee, I remember distinctly years ago when LoveBug virus hit, everyone was down but the Notes folks... the UI may not be exactly like Microsoft (which is why I think many of you don't like it, it's not Windows:) but the "mail" is robust and secure enough that it doesn't get viruses, you can restore a single user or many (Exchange 2k3 just recently got that I think), and the PKI security is enough that the CIA, FBI, NSA and other TLOs have to use it. Or, if you prefer, you can authenticate using LDAP (even to Active Directory) and even BE the LDAP authentication server for other apps.

Sure, the next argument is that small little 8 person companies don't need the level of security, failover, extensibility, etc. that an enterprise environment requires... That's true, but they don't want Exchange and the overhead it requires either.


A special note to the consultant or whomever in another posting here - *you* haven't converted any shops to Notes lately (and you are The World???) - but the net turnover last year was almost 1500 big shops switching from Microsuck to Lotus (next time research before you slam). Check out the recent case studies if you like.

For those folks that care, you should know that Lotus Notes isn't email software - email is like 10% of what it does... Lotus is workflow applications, web applications, blogs, middleware and integration, document management, presence awareness (Lotus Sametime IM is #1 in the Fortune 500). And let's not forget, they support open standards more than anyone, period (you would think OSS folks would get this???) If you want you data in XML, you got it... with Microsuck you get their closed version. You can have an app server that runs Domino, attaches to MySQL, output pages using Perl and PHP... anything you want really (simply put, it's incredibly extensible).

Platforms ? You can run it on Windows, AIX, Solaris, z/OS, iSeries, o yeah, they even have a version FOR LINUX, RedHat and UnitedLinux certified ! (where's Exchange for Linux?).

Check it out for yourself.

Please, when you are bashing Lotus Notes, if it's the mail client you have issue with, try to state that. Saying you don't like Lotus Notes is like saying you had a bad experience with a car you owned in college, therefor all cars suck !

If you don't like the mail client, use Outlook instead, the servers have IMAP and POP.
If your apps suck, thank a developer (I guess if a VB app you used once sucked, that would mean all computers suck or something?).
Red Box of Death ? Try moving to a version from this MILLENNIUM !

Letsee, I remember distinctly years ago when LoveBug virus hit, everyone was down but the Notes folks... the UI may not be exactly like Microsoft (which is why I think many of you don't like it, it's not Windows:) but the "mail" is robust and secure enough that it doesn't get viruses, you can restore a single user or many (Exchange 2k3 just recently got that I think), and the PKI security is enough that the CIA, FBI, NSA and other TLOs have to use it. Or, if you prefer, you can authenticate using LDAP (even to Active Directory) and even BE the LDAP authentication server for other apps.

Sure, the next argument is that small little 8 person companies don't need the level of security, failover, extensibility, etc. that an enterprise environment requires... That's true, but they don't want Exchange and the overhead it requires either.


A special note to the consultant or whomever in another posting here - *you* haven't converted any shops to Notes lately (and you are The World???) - but the net turnover last year was almost 1500 big shops switching from Microsuck to Lotus (next time research before you slam). Check out the recent case studies if you like.

For those folks that care, you should know that Lotus Notes isn't email software - email is like 10% of what it does... Lotus is workflow applications, web applications, blogs, middleware and integration, document management, presence awareness (Lotus Sametime IM is #1 in the Fortune 500). And let's not forget, they support open standards more than anyone, period (you would think OSS folks would get this???) If you want you data in XML, you got it... with Microsuck you get their closed version. You can have an app server that runs Domino, attaches to MySQL, output pages using Perl and PHP... anything you want really (simply put, it's incredibly extensible).

Platforms ? You can run it on Windows, AIX, Solaris, z/OS, iSeries, o yeah, they even have a version FOR LINUX, RedHat and UnitedLinux certified ! (where's Exchange for Linux?).

Check it out for yourself.

A system that allows computer-generated presences to communicate with each other, with you able to watch the results?

All you have to do is open up emacs and start up psychoanalyze-pinhead and poof, there you go. Eliza meets Zippy the Pinhead!

(For more information, go here and scroll down a little.)

... or IBM offering Linux on its high-end servers, or the SE Linux initiative.

Well ... no mention of anything new - just point releases. Big talking up of Linux compatibility (the L in 5L). Plenty of mention of migrating from Solaris to Linux (e.g. here), nothing about migrating to AIX (they mention upgrades, but not migration). The whole Project Monterey thing, now defunct. To me it all says IBM aren't much interested in AIX.

Ummm...no

...Right.

Nobody actually financially benefits from open source.

I'm sorry, I guess I didn't quite catch what you meant. Run that by me again?

Hmm... are you thinking a really cheap version of this?

1-way SMP with 1.0GHz or 1 or 2-way 1.45GHz POWER4+ microprocessor
1.5MB L2 and 8MB ECC L3 cache
Up to 16GB of ECC SDRAM memory with Chipkill
Up to 4 Ultra320 SCSI hot-swap 10K or 15K RPM disk drives
Six PCI-X adapter slots
Gigabit Ethernet and 10/100 Ethernet standard
Select from 2D and 3D graphics accelerators
IBM's CATIA V4 performance leader.

Ever since IBM announced their so called "OpenPOWER" machines, I've been lusting after one. Sure, they are more expensive, but he could afford it and a dual POWER5 at 1.6Ghz would blow the pants off any current Mac.

With an attitude like yours, I have to think maybe YOU are one of those imbalanced linux supporters considering I just posed a question and didn't give my opinion. Or maybe you're just a groupthink kinda guy.

The article is about enemies of linux claiming a lacking in linux to promote their own platfor which is what my link describes.

The point is, the article doesn't name any specific examples of what is being said and who is saying it. How do we know we can't make the same argument with those enemies when we don't know who they are or the context in which they are saying them? This article is no better than thte FUD it seems to be dismissing. If you take parts out of that link I sent you can make an article look like IBM is crapping all over Linux. Too many things that get called FUD these days are similar.

So much of this news on open source is just crap. Nothing more than opinion peices with no real content. Unless someone with a development or administrative background reports something I don't care about it too much when it comes to software or hardware. There used to be a time in open source software where if someone said "your x doesn't do y" or doesn't do it as well, someone would SHOW that it does instead of claiming "So and so is using it, it must be good". Now linux and open source has their own sensational pr and marketting divisions.

You even say something similar yourself at the end of your posting

"But I do see that there are people who would prefer to see Linux and its user base curl up and die. It is those people that I have a problem with."

Who are these people and what is it that makes you think that and how is it different than this IBM article?

What IBM? Does this make IBM an enemy of Linux as well?

Something like this then: http://www-132.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/P roductDisplay?catalogId=-840&langId=-1&partNumber= 31P8950&storeId=1

IBM used to make one with just the Trackpoint but it's been discontinued. They now have one with both the Trackpoint and a touchpad.

Get either an MCP, Sun Java certification, or perhaps IBM's linux certification. Proof that you know what you're doing, and lots of jobs ask for them.

That's what people used to say about the undocumented values chosen by NSA and IBM for the S-boxes in DES.

Then when people outside NSA discovered differential cryptanalysis twenty years later it turned out that IBM and NSA had actually designed the S-boxes to make DES especially hard to break using differential cryptanalysis.

Sorry, have to get in a plug for my employer.

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/ne tview/

You can buy it on its own, or for even more coolness just buy our Tivoli Enterprise Console and NetView is included free, with an unlimited license (for NV, not TEC) :)

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/en terprise-console/

Sorry, have to get in a plug for my employer.

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/ne tview/

You can buy it on its own, or for even more coolness just buy our Tivoli Enterprise Console and NetView is included free, with an unlimited license (for NV, not TEC) :)

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/en terprise-console/

basic scientific research

law enforcement... military defense

development of open protocols like TCP/IP

providing health insurance that doesn't leave you filing for bankruptcy if you get sick

I'm applying for IBM's Extreme Blue internship this summer (gotten past the first two interviews, hope to take the IPATO test tomorrow or something). If you've done something notable for an open source project of some sort, you get major props towards them accepting you.

Rational's round-trip design theories eventually wound up in their XDE product. I used this on a prototype project, and it worked pretty well. I had used Rose in the past, so I was pretty much prepared to install this, look it over and uninstall, but it's actually pretty usable. You create the diagram, and XDE creates the code at the same time. If you update the code, XDE updates the diagram. We were writing a new system from scratch, so I don't know how well it would work in a reverse-engineering scenario, but it was totally usable (on a dual-proc P4 2GHz box with 1G memory) for us.

Unfortunately, it didn't play well with word processors, so creating format documentation meant a lot of C&P, which of course would have to be redone when the design changed. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that it was a WSAD (Eclipse) plug-in, but it would have been nice to at least support exporting to some standard file format.

Numerical Python is a set of libraries providing fast, multidimensional, array processing facilities. I have no knowledge of the Perl PDL, so I can't provide any comparitive information.

More information can be found at http://numeric.scipy.org/numpydoc/numdoc.htm

and at:
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/librar y/l-cpnum.html

At the expense of shops who were using no computer at all. Or abacuses.

I would laugh if the situation weren't so serious for my company. We are on the verge of a disaster.

Chisembop manual sales have been flat for 5 years.

Adding machine sales are down 38%.

Calculator sales are down 52%, including the newest hand held models.

Slide rule sales are down 79%.

Analytical engine sales are down 93%.

Tabulator sales are down 98%.

Our abacus miniaturization project is running into problems with prior art by a "major" competitor.

To top it off, our hope for a Multitronic breakthrough appears to have dangerous side effects after four models that were outright failures.

Unless we can pump up our mentat outsourcing service, or complete development of our Make me a Rainman! kit, we're doomed! Doomed I tell you! :(

I've never heard of anyone running Windows on blades. Does anyone do this?

Yes, I just finished a 3-year server consolidation deal collapsing over 700 servers to ESX on "big boxes" and Windows primarily on IBM blade. Now I'm wrapping up an 8 week SCON design project collapsing over 100 aging Windows servers to a mix of VMware and Windows on HP blades. Here's a small book on deploying Exchange on IBM's blade offering. FWIW, I'm an IBM SCON Architect. Blade is a nice alternative to ESX when customers either

a) want a good consolidation ratio but using physical servers instead of VMware (14 servers in 7U), or
b) want to go nuts consolidating over 100 servers to 7U with VMware but splitting all the "eggs" across 14 different "baskets", or
c) somewhere in between

BTW, HP offers 8 blades in 6U, and you can't mix RISC and Intel blades in the same chassis; advantage IBM

Yea, but if you're going to go that route, you're tossing out a copy of OS X Server... and shouldn't you be able to find something almost as good from IBM, like the BladeCenter jS20?

du... what the hell am I saying? Yea, buy an XServe!! I has cool blinkinlights!

"Resource Manager [...] is simply a zSeries like WorkLoad Manager tool"

z/OS Workload Manager is a higher-level layer that allocates processor, storage and I/O resources for you, based upon general goals that you set for arbitrary classes of work. You give WLM the relative importance of the applications you run, and specify your performance expectations. WLM dynamically adjusts dispatching priorities, assigns more or less storage, and generally performs the workaday tuning that a performance analyst had to do manually when there was only SRM.

(An oldie but a goodie: PDF presentation contrasting SRM and WLM.)

ERH is the best XML teacher in books. I did, however, have a few notes on Effective XML:

"Thinking XML: Harold's Effective XML" [IBM developerWorks]

Well, the technical knowledge is required of the CEO, but not deep down technical knowledge, like being able to parse Assembly code thrown out by debugger. Gerstner understood his business, and understoof the fact that engineers design stuff while sales people sell it.

I've read his book about his experience at IBM and most of it dealt with getting rid of middle layer (IBM had so many managers, that half of the time the secretaries of the managers would arrive at a meeting instead of the managers). Guess who else suffers from managerial overflow.

Also Gerstner started layoffs in groups that did not produce any valuable products and that grew enormously by hiring, but never delivering real results. Some smart people there, but not capable of delivering a 1.0. The layoffs caused lots of criticism.

So generally while technical knowledge is advised, more often than not it's the CEO's organizational skills and ability to spend X dollars to earn Y dollars where Y>X.

Now, I know somebody will point out OpenFirmware [...] This is nothing more than the Maximalist approach [...]
[The OpenFirmware drivers] are good enough to boot the system, and then get replaced by OS specific drivers [...]

Reading your text I think you have a few misconceptions on what Open Firmware is and which features it provides. I suggest reading this very insightful introduction.
If you are an embedded systems engineer, what do you think about alternate approaches like Tinyboot?

FreeBSD can run on enterprise class hardware if you feel like buying enterprise class hardware.

No, actually it can't.

This, this, this, this, this, this, even this, and of course this is enterprise class hardware. FreeBSD runs none of them, so what enterprise class hardware *does* it run on?

FreeBSD doesn't even understand NUMA, which is basically indispensable for Opteron, POWER, or any serious Intel IA64 or x86 platforms.

FreeBSD can run on enterprise class hardware if you feel like buying enterprise class hardware.

No, actually it can't.

This, this, this, this, this, this, even this, and of course this is enterprise class hardware. FreeBSD runs none of them, so what enterprise class hardware *does* it run on?

FreeBSD doesn't even understand NUMA, which is basically indispensable for Opteron, POWER, or any serious Intel IA64 or x86 platforms.

FreeBSD can run on enterprise class hardware if you feel like buying enterprise class hardware.

No, actually it can't.

This, this, this, this, this, this, even this, and of course this is enterprise class hardware. FreeBSD runs none of them, so what enterprise class hardware *does* it run on?

FreeBSD doesn't even understand NUMA, which is basically indispensable for Opteron, POWER, or any serious Intel IA64 or x86 platforms.

IBM already uses it in their high-end server products, like the ones that used to be called RS/6000.

Actually, that hardly does it justice. pSeries (formerly RS/6000), yes, but also iSeries (formerly AS/400) is now POWER. The new OpenPower line of systems from IBM can run AIX, i5/OS (formerly OS/400), and Linux. In fact, it can run them simultaneously thanks to IBM's really good server partitioning technology (you can partition down to 1/10 of a CPU!).

I'm currently doing some development work on one of these boxes (running Linux on POWER) and let me tell you, it just smokes. Runs circles around Itanium, even before you start parallelizing (which is usually the case, since you're always going to have a dual-core chip, maybe even several of them).

IBM has absolutely no reason to continue supporting Itanium. It doesn't buy them anything. Itanic is an architecture nobody wants. If Intel hadn't sank so much R&D into it while still being able to live off the revenue from their 32-bit processors (and now, their AMD64 clones), Itanium would have been shelved a year ago.

Article has some strange ideas about what constitutes a High-end server. I'd imagine a IBM P595 which supports up to 64 Processors would be high end... IBM seems to think so too. But then again what do they know about high end. I mean, they are only #2 in the High end server market (over $1,000,000 per server), and #1 in the mid-range server market (between $100,00 and $,1,00,000 per server).

Things have changed since the 80s. Carts are about 4 1/2 inches square and with compression can hold up to 180GB on 384 tracks. ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/common/ssi/rep_sp/n/TSD 00259USEN/TSD00259USEN.PDF/

They're way out in front for the scientific code that I write.
Really... Power 5

But, didn't IBM sell off its PC/laptop ("Think" brand) business to Lenovo? (IBM press release "Lenovo to Acquire IBM Personal Computing Division" ..that I didn't actually read to the end.)

But isn't being a team player the whole point, anyways? IBM can join teams when it doesn't want to start one, right?

IBM, while dominating and monopolistic in its day, did have a reputation for quality and topnotch research.

Yes, there is MS Research but it's in no way comparable to IBM Research.

And don't even mention MS and "quality" in the same breath unless the words "lack of" are placed between them.

On a somewhat related note, IBM has released rhype, it's research hypervisor as open source under the GPL. This should spice up the free hypervisor community. First Xen, now IBM's rhype. Choice is so good :)

MS could not do that. They'd have to release the MS-Linux (I feel icky just saying that) in the GPL, and that would just chafe them big time.

It would probably mean that manufacturers would say: Heck, leenooks people want drivers, microsoft wants drivers, let's just write linus drivers, since MS can use their MS-Linux.

That woul dbe the death of the current windows Codebase.

OT: Longhorn will not be released. Microsoft will have collapsed enough by then that they won't be able to support the core dev team.

Fine, don't believe me. Just remember that windows 2003 server is already 2 years old, it is an overkill already.

That, and if you want real enterprise-grade software, you go Linux (free as in Zero Dollars)

For those of you who have a hard time accespting the last statement:
Oracle is the de-facto enterprise database. See http://www.itp.net/news/details.php?id=13678&categ ory=

IBM's newest mainframe, the zSeries, supports Redhat, Suse, and Turbolinux. But no MS Windows. See http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/os/

Linux on cellphones:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1765103,00.as p?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594

Linux at Merryl Lynch, etc etc etc.

You can't kill linux. Even Linus can't kill Linux. If Linus decided he had had enough of the rat race and decided to spend all his time at home with his wife, Linux would go on withour missing a beat.
Microsoft can't kill linux for the very same reasons.

For those who ever used it, it looks as though IBM is taking on PHP as a replacement for its old web language "Net.Data".

One PCIe slot/lane has a transfer rate of ~250MB/s (2x PCI). You can easily add mroe lanes to each slot. So with graphics, you have 16 PCIe lanes at 250MB/s each.

That's interesting because IBM says PCI express runs at 200 MB/s. There's also only 1,2,4,8 and 16x to the specification.

I think I'm having Déjà Vu. I am reading that one of the great advantages of PCI express is its ability to talk to other cards without going through the CPU. Hmm, doesn't PCI have this now?

Mod parent up, and see also this link. This idea was taken and patented already.

...there all over the place:

Dell Itanium
HP Itanium
IBM Itanium

And here - IBM Research - PAN
And I'm pretty sure I read about it on Slashdot at the time, too, but darned if I can find it in a search now.

Is NTT just sooo big that they can take on IBM in a patent fight; or is it a cross-licensing deal?

I can think of a lot of applications for this if they can get it to fit into a Java Ring...

http://domino.research.ibm.com/Comm/bios.nsf/pages /pan.html
From 1997 at IBM

Personally, may I recommend a keyboard such as the IBM ultranav. It has the integrated trackpoint, which is brilliant, since I never need to take a hand off the keyboard to use the mouse. (Yes, I have an external mouse for graphics, but I rarely use it otherwise). The result is that it is dramatically faster to use.

I found the trackpoint so wonderful on my thinkpad that I bought an external keyboard with one for my desktop!

However, I *hate* the inbuilt touchpad, and the fact that the trackpoint doesn't come with a scrollwheel. Well, with a bit of hackery, it does now. Effectively, I have a 3-button mouse, with a scroll wheel implemented via a 4th button, and XF86's "emulate wheel" option. The 4th button is constructed from a chopped up 5 button + wheel usb-mouse, and a 4066 analog switch. Circuit diagram on request.

Everytime chess gets mentioned on /. (ok I know it's a go story but you know the comparisons will start) I like to post a link to this short story written by Arthur C. Clarke. I originally found the story through someone else's /. post http://www.research.ibm.com/deepblue/learn/html/e. 8.2.shtml

I am curious if it was on a pSeries or xSeries

When the config earned EAL2+, it was on xSeries, but according to this, they earned EAL3+ on *all* platforms. I did a little digging but couldn't find if the same applies to this certification. I know it doesn't answer your question, but it may keep your hopes up to dig some more. As an IBM consultant doing Linux on x, p, and z.. I say "cool!"

In the context of a corporate data center, BSD has nothing to offer. BSD doesn't have the needed technology.