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Domain: sun.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to sun.com.
Comments · 7,362
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Shameless plug
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Shameless plug
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Re:Steve Jobs...Sure it has ECC memory and high raw cpu power i can get a much better desktop tower for an all-purpose computer That's your first problem, it's not a desktop tower, it's a high end work station. When you start throwing in features like ECC the price goes up steeply. Some people (obviously not you) want or need those features.
Similar machines are just as pricey...
The Sun has a max of 8GB memory, Apple's is 16GB. The Apple uses a pricier Xeon processor. The Mac also has more FireWire and USB ports, Sun doesn't specify FW 400 or 800. The Sun has more up to date graphics available, but they have a deal with NVidia, and I can't tell if an off the shelf card will work with it. The Sun (unsurprisingly) seems to have a stronger IO architecture.
Anyways, because you don't seem to understand the difference between a desktop system and a workstation system, I thought I'd point out some differences between those two workstations. Obviously there's a market for them, and there are other competitors as well.
Maybe what you should be complaining about is why Apple doesn't make a cheap tower desktop. They aren't blind, they have to see that short road to gaining heaps of market share, but they aren't taking it for some reason. I think it's because they have better plans. -
Re:'.doc' is not a single formatIf MS published the specs for the old binary formats, we wouldn't ahve that problem either.
They tried to with OOXML, but in many cases large part of the specs are "make it work like this version of Word."Actually, as you point out, they did not. Though to hear the MS boosters hoot and howl, you'd think it did. MS OOXML does not provide any information at all about how to implement the legacy formats.
It's rather funny to see how easily the MS-fed media is able to bullshit people, distracting them with talk of conversion and APIs. But at the end of the day, excuses and distractions don't cut it. To read a format, you need the specification, regardless of whether it is new or old. The legacy formats have specifications, presumably, that could be published.
In the mean time, it is important to start creating documents using formats that are published and open, such as OpenDocument.
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Re:Only for sharing documents
How about adding the Sun ODF plugin to your Office installs during your next round of ghosting? You get to keep using MS Office for whatever strange reason and gain use of ODF files without having to install and learn the whole of OO.org. You could also teach the users to export to PDF rather than doc since they only need to print.
http://www.sun.com/software/star/odf_plugin/
Captcha: approved -
Re:I save in ODF
Don't point them to the OpenOffice website; that's rude. Just point them to Sun's ODF Plugin for MS Office.
Personally, I don't care what they hell lame-ass word processor they're using, as long as the documents they save in are in an open format. -
Re:ODF-only here
I generally follow that: ODF for my work and for interoperability. PDF for files to be printed by the clueless.
If I know someone is using MS Office and doesn't have a parallel installation of another suite, then I point them to Sun's ODF plugin as well as to the Firefox ODF Viewer.
I mainly use OOo, but occasionally try Koffice, Abiword, etc. I used to have MS Office one various spare machines. What got me (re-)started with OOo was how slow and crash-prone I found MS Office XP to be. When OOo hit 1.5 I found that, for me, it beat XP in speed, flexibility, reliability and accurate rendering of files produced by others. YMMV.
It's been years since I had MS Office on any machines and I look forward to promoting KOffice now that it's available even for legacy platforms.
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Re:Count at least ONE who doesnt.
That's frickin' rude, man. Seriously, if I was doing business with you, especially where I was paying you, and you sent me some link to a new office suite because you sent me documents I couldn't read, I would cease to do business with your company.
Its one thing to stick to your principles, but to force someone to adopt a different office suite when there are other alternatives to -
Re:Count Two
You should advocate installing Sun's ODF Plugin for MS Office. It works quite well, as is free (as in beer).
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'.doc' is not a single format
'.doc' is a whole shitload of different formats, some very differentm some only a little different. However, it is because of the differences that sales for new versions of MS Office are driven. If the old programs could read the new formats, then we wouldn't have that problem. Why else do you think that MS Offfice 2007 munges your old files?
If MS published the specs for the old binary formats, we wouldn't ahve that problem either. Or if MS Office supported an open format like OpenDocument we wouldn't have that problem.
The way off the treadmill is openformats even for MS Office. -
False Alarm
No cause for panic, everybody. I checked, and it's still running just fine.
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Re:Layman's terms?
Hmmm, the URL appears to have disappeared:
This is the answer you are looking for -
Microsoft doesn't make bugs only in computer
but also in world process !
Now, that a big bad corporation, that have enought power to stop the ISO process.
Ok, Bill what the next move, are you resposible for the Sun to shutoff , just because you don't know the difference between Sun and the SUN ?
What about your Social responsibility.
In a normal country, this kind of organisation would have been shutoff for long. -
Re:Cocoa Regular ExpressionsAs expected, the point was missed entirely, as it has been missed it for the last six years.
- GNOME http://library.gnome.org/devel/glib/stable/glib-Perl-compatible-regular-expressions.html
- Qt http://doc.trolltech.com/4.3/qregexp.html
- WxWindows http://www.wxwidgets.org/manuals/stable/wx_wxregex.html
- Java http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/util/regex/package-summary.html
All these people have technologies that compete with Cocoa+Objective-C. And they are all shipping their stuff with regular expression functionality. Today.
My point is that there are numerous gaping in holes in the functionality of the API and language that Apple has been touting as the future of mac development. With Leopard, Apple spent lots of money to put even more bling on the naked emperor when they should have bought him a cheap suit. -
Re:Patented by Google
Like this?
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Re:Snapshots vs. Backup
NTFS allows for something similar. Take the snapshot, run the backup against the snapshot (I believe windows calls this a "shaow copy"). So while the concept is not intrinsic to the concept of a snapshot, it is also not a ZFS specific implimentation (and giving credit where it's due, is a good idea, and AFAIK was first in NTFS). Getting at different versions isn't that difficult, although it would require some footwork to make it practical for the lay-person via the GUI (if i can script it, a GUI can be made for it).
Using a snapshot freezes that data in a state quickly (close enough to instantly that any difference is irrelevant). It can then continue to be written while backups are occurring. This is probably not an issue so much on a workstation as a loaded server (although if your taking them hourly, it might become one).
The only thing written is the differences between the states. Maybe I'm missing something, but thats the most-efficient way to store both. Now that I'm really thinking about it, it is probably block-granular. I know it cannot be file-granular because the zfs has no understanding of how the data within a zvol is structured (ergo, if it were file-granular it would have to treat the entire volume as a single file). If you were to store two full copies of your multi gig files, THAT would be huge.
No one, including SUN (despite what the wonderful and highly knowledgeable folks at MacJournals seem to think http://www.macjournals.com/news/2007/10/07#a80 ), is claiming is that they take up no disk space ( http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/819-5461/6n7ht6qs9?a=view : "Snapshots can be created almost instantly, and initially consume no additional disk space within the pool. However, as data within the active dataset changes, the snapshot consumes disk space by continuing to reference the old data and so prevents the space from being freed."). What I am claiming (I cannot speak for SUN) is that they do not, under normal usage patterns "eat disk space like crazy" (both of these lies MacJournals has claimed at least twice now (once verbatim on the latter)). Further MacJournals' article in response to their statement goes on to completely mischaracterize an comment from Drew Thaler (the thought that 20GB was huge 10 years ago now 200GBs are in things we don't even normally think of as computers, so it is likely that 20TB will be commonplace in the not-to-distant future). While they occasionally have a point (yes,it does increase processor usage, so if your machine is processor starved (or not 64 bit (has OSX gone fully 64 bit yet?)) it might introduce battery issues), most of MacJournals' comments are so ill-informed they do not even qualify as FUD. This source is less reputable then the AppleInsider (and that is saying alot, there were numerous errors in the AppleInsider piece, but common these guys can't even grasp how "standard RAID" (and, as before, 2 is far from standard) works.
Oninoshiko -
Oops!
This doesn't look good for Sun's Blackbox project.
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Sun Blackbox?
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Sun Blackbox?
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Re:computers in education, smalltalk
If you like Squeak, you might be interested to see that that crazy Dan Ingalls has ported it to Javascript (SVG-supporting browser required. Works in Safari, more-or-less works in Firefox, doesn't work in IE).
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Re:URBI
With a Java interface, I wonder if you could get some traction combining URBI with SunSpot [PDF] nodes for controller interfaces...
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Re:Conspiracy theory - MS behind all this?
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Re:Conspiracy theory - MS behind all this?
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Re:Oh, bullshit
Apple's never been too happy about Java.
Then why did they used to have Cocoa bindings of Java? Yes, they discontinued it, but for awhile, they wanted developers to use the Mac-specific Java libraries. (AFAIK using Cocoa with Java actually predates Mac OS X -- didn't NeXT have bindings for use with WebObjects or some such in the late 90s?)
Also... Notice how a Swing app looks in Mac OS X. They've created a damn good LAF.
By the way, the interoperable standards for Java on cell phones and small devices do exist. They can use Java Micro Edition and the Connected Device Configuration. MIDP also has standards for using bluetooth, SMS, etc., all from a java program. MIDP's LCDUI, the GUI for cell phones, does suck. But I believe there is also a JSR for a subset of Swing or AWT. If they go with Swing they could also use their LAF that ships with Mac OS today. -
corrected link for ODF plugin
Here is the correct link to the free ODF import/export plugin. The one at sourceforge is the one sponsored by MS and has only recently started work. The Sun plugin has been ready for a while now.
They jury is still out as to whether MS will fund the sourceforge project to completion or even allow it to be completed. Seeing as MSOOXML can't be implemented without full details of some undocumented, proprietary, legacy specifications, full implementation is contingent on a lot of help and heretofore unavailable information from MS.
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Re:I think you mean GMT *plus* 13.
Actually it's correct. The POSIX standard specifies the timezones backwards.
See, e.g.: http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4813746
Clever, eh?
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Re:Apple Evangelists aren't working for IntelSun's Sunfire servers may be a better buy, they are well designed, solid, well serviced, less expensive and I think they are faster at this point in time, but they are not using the Intel chips.
They are now:
http://www.sun.com/servers/x64/x4150/
http://www.sun.com/servers/x64/x4450/ -
Re:Apple Evangelists aren't working for IntelSun's Sunfire servers may be a better buy, they are well designed, solid, well serviced, less expensive and I think they are faster at this point in time, but they are not using the Intel chips.
They are now:
http://www.sun.com/servers/x64/x4150/
http://www.sun.com/servers/x64/x4450/ -
Available through POSIX pthread and RT extension
I think that what Intel's Evangelist wants is already available through standard POSIX pthreads and the POSIX-RT extensions.
man pset_create, pset_assign, or pset_bind.
I just checked and it seems that Solaris, HP-UX support this POSIX feature. Maybe it's only Linux that is non-standard: I found ythis quote: http://developers.sun.com/solaris/articles/solaris_linux_app.html
"Both Linux and the Solaris OS support the notion of binding a process or thread to a processor. Linux allows binding to a set of processors for non-exclusive use of those processors. The Solaris OS allows binding to a set of processors for exclusive use, (that is, CPU fencing), but does not allow binding to a group for non-exclusive use (except via Solaris Zones?). Linux does not have a mechanism for CPU fencing, though implementations can be found on the web (see, for example, the CPUSETS for Linux page on the bullopensource.org site). The Linux system calls that are processor affinity based are sched_setaffinity(2) and sched_getaffinity(2)." -
Citation
Actually, Bill Joy invented <tt>chroot</tt> as a hack to use a custom
http://blogs.sun.com/chrisg/tags/chroot
Dr. Marshall Kirk Mckusick, private communication: ``According to the SCCS logs, the chroot call was added by Bill Joy on March 18, 1982 approximately 1.5 years before 4.2BSD was released. That was well before we had ftp servers of any sort (ftp did not show up in the source tree until January 1983). My best guess as to its purpose was to allow Bill to chroot into the -
Re:Use 'raw' XML examples *too*.
Completely off topic, but see http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/816-5166/ping-1m?a=view.
This is why I use Sun manual pages (even though they miss GNU extensions and are sometimes very slow). -
Re:In OOXML?
Using BigDecimals is probably easiest.
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Re:What Are the Rest of us Doing?We include schemas in the appendix but it seems that the clients like the 'readability' of the raw XML over other approaches we've tried. I'm wondering what everyone else is doing in the world of XML documentation. Having as little to do with it as possible. Everybody just grabs any raw XML they can find in order to try and understand it, and they fly by the seat of their pants. Not much you can say will change that. And that's a good thing is it? In my experience an amazingly high proportion of developers don't do any code documentation at all unless they are forced to do it. This is a major reason why a lot of time is wasted the moment a new developer joins a team since it takes him significantly more time to plow his way through a whole pile of undocumented code than it would if take if the original developer had made even a half hearted attempt at commenting his code. Its pretty sad that there are developers out there who are only vaguely aware of what javadoc is and when pressed don't even know how to use it. The same can be said about many other common development tools. I've actually met developers who don't know how to use Make or Ant. Committing your <insert name of your favorite IDE> projects directly into CVS/Subversion is only a good idea until you have to cooperate with a team using a different IDE, with Ant you get complete IDE independence.
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Re:Symmetry
Are there really any memory problems that cannot be cured by strict adherance to the rule of "allocate memory at the beginging of a routine, deallocate same amount at the end"?
This would be better states as: "allocate memory when needed and dellocate when no longer required" - memory allocations/dellocations do not always occur in the same routine, and this only gets worse in OO programming. However, garbage-collection does not resolve the issue either. The real answer is smart design and smart programming - and by smart programming I am not talking about garbage-collectors, etc. done for the programmer, I am talking about programmers programming smartly so that their programs manage their resources properly and efficiently.
Which brings my second point - even with your original version, this cannot always be done in some languages as some languages remove the ability to free resources. For example, so far as I am aware - and so far as I can tell - Java cannot free memory resources outside of the garbage collector. So much for a programmer being able to manage their resources properly - this is probably also one of the big reasons Java sucks at performance. -
Re:Also it is expensive as hell
here is a listing of various units, starting at $4k for a 6-core setup.
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Re:Why not?
Speaking as a Sun employee, and on behalf of many of my fellow employees: hear, hear! Sun has always had control issues. It's part of the corporate culture. People here criticize this every day, both constructively and otherwise. Why should the larger community be any different?
One suggestion: don't complain to other Slashdotters: not a lot they can do. And don't complain to me: I'm just a hardware tech writer. Take your complaints to the top. -
Sun sells Unix
As best I can tell, and it's certified http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/802-1953/6i5uv2sif. I'll bet HP-UX and AIX are too. So is Daryl's claim t that his Unix isn't as marketable as other people's Unixes??
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Re:MS Exchange
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Real-life proof of ZFS detecting problems
Give this blog entry a read:
http://blogs.sun.com/elowe/entry/zfs_saves_the_day_ta
And you'll understand -
They already can.
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-0547/eyaks?l=en&a=view&q=samba
You need to make sure all the SUNWsmb* packages are installed, then enable/configure libnss_winbind, pam_winbind and kerberos to talk to your AD.
It's a little tricky to set up but pretty straightforward if you know all your AD details.
What would be nice is some management tools that automate it but we can dream, right? -
Re:Ars Technica coverageThis chart depicts how Sun used to be. But since Schwartz became Sun's CEO in April 2006, the company has been actually very focused on its goals (opensourcing its OS, CPUs, languages, increasing R&D, etc). Of particular interest is how Schwarts made the point in one of its recent blog entries, that his company is the perfect example of how you can make money from opensource products (since he became CEO, Sun has become profitable):
We did this while driving significant product transitions, going after new markets and product areas, and best of all, while aggressively moving the whole company to open source software (leading me to hope we can officially put to rest the question, "how will you make money?").
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It makes sense for Sun
They have some nice boxes. I'm sure some admins would like to run Windows on them.
I'd like an X4600 so I could throw VMware ESX on it -
Re:Winning friends and influencing people...
The whole point of the GPL is that it's subversive, and destroys traditional economic value by creating plenty and subverting efforts to legislate scarcity and ownership.
You're quite right, it isn't because it doesn't enforce the creation of plentiful supply on downstream recipients, the licence's biggest failing in the eyes of the FSF. You obviously have more political concerns than I, which probably looks to some like I'm either lazy or naïve, but all I need is a solid OS with the tools to get things done. I can do without the inevitable clashes of personality that go with it. We BSD users haven't totally escaped, of course; Theo is still about somewhere
That's why I like it, that's why I take the time to teach myself about software released in this fashion, that's why I support it.
FreeBSD isn't going to deliver that to me.
By the way, on the subject of Solaris, you can grab a media kit for x86 (Express Developer Edition 5/07) here. I think it's free for the DVD. At least, it was when I got one to try. -
What do you mean, troll?
Java was open sourced under the GPLv2.
http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/java/faq.jsp#g1 -
The article it wrong; IBM work is not from MS IPIAccessible2 is an extension to IAccessible, the core accessible object in Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA). It supplements the MS-defined information with a ton of stuff that is missing and is needed to provide real support for assistive technologies (vs. the very limited job Microsoft did). IAccessible2 is actually a port of the GNOME Accessibility API that Sun developed and brought to the GNOME community (see ATK and AT-SPI from the GNOME SVN repository). That was in turn derived from the Java Accessibility API, of which I am a co-author.
More specifically, the IAccessible2 header files are copied almost directly from the OpenOffice.org UNO Accessibility API - the IAccessible2 headers contain a Sun copyright! See http://blogs.sun.com/korn/date/20070910 and http://blogs.sun.com/korn/date/20061214 for more on this.
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The article it wrong; IBM work is not from MS IPIAccessible2 is an extension to IAccessible, the core accessible object in Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA). It supplements the MS-defined information with a ton of stuff that is missing and is needed to provide real support for assistive technologies (vs. the very limited job Microsoft did). IAccessible2 is actually a port of the GNOME Accessibility API that Sun developed and brought to the GNOME community (see ATK and AT-SPI from the GNOME SVN repository). That was in turn derived from the Java Accessibility API, of which I am a co-author.
More specifically, the IAccessible2 header files are copied almost directly from the OpenOffice.org UNO Accessibility API - the IAccessible2 headers contain a Sun copyright! See http://blogs.sun.com/korn/date/20070910 and http://blogs.sun.com/korn/date/20061214 for more on this.
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Re:question for the local geniuses...
Doesn't the software have to be optimised for multiprocessors?
Well, it has to be multithreaded. Thing is, a lot of software is multithreaded already; even on a single-core system, it makes sense to distribute functionality among multiple threads so that resources are used efficiently. On server systems (which is where Opterons are mostly used) software pretty much has to be multithreaded — you don't want all your other clients hanging when one client is waiting on a resource. A web server is a classic example.
When you move a multithreaded program to a system with more cores, than any given thread is more likely to get a core to run on when it needs it. Assuming, of course, that you have enough threads so that's an issue.
Shameless plug: I'm the docs lead for this Opeteron-based server, which can have up to 8 CPUs, for a total of 16 cores. When the Barcelona-based CPU modules are ready, customers will be able to upgrade their systems to a maximum of 32 cores. (Don't ask me when this will happen; Marketing would have me killed.) Obviously any software running on such a system has already dealt with the multicore optimization issue. -
Re:XMLTV
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Release the source
Like Sun with the Niagara Processor. That would be cool.
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Re:Original PDF and NetApp's explanation
I find it hard to believe that Sun started this. Why or how could they sue over a patent that they open sourced? ZFS is free!
I find what Jonathan at Sun has to say more believable. http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/on_patent_tro
l ling/