Domain: unisys.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to unisys.com.
Comments · 162
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Re:This was inevitable
This one big enough for you?
up to 64 processors - 32 Xeons, and 32 Itanic 2s
And yes it runs Linux.
Obviously you'd only get a maximum of 32 processors per partition though.
Unisys only offer Windows, Linux and their own legacy mainframe OS - no Solaris in sight, though they used to support SCO as their Unix OS.
Unisys's market is very definitely enterprise servers for running databases, business processing and application servers, not HPC. -
Re:Top 10 observation
Windows Datacenter Edition can handle more than 8 processors. Unisys sells a 32x called the ES 7000 . http://www.unisys.com/products/es7000__servers/ha
r dware/index.htm -
Re:ZIP patent...
This happened a few years back.
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Way to help the economy...
I don't see this bill getting passed, simply because of all the money that's been spent to create the public side of NOAA/NWS.
I use the NWS Doppler radar almost every day during the storm season. It's accurate and timely, unlike the other services out there (AccuWeather, TWC, Unisys). I used to use Unisys' maps (http://weather.unisys.com/) but they would be delayed by up to an hour at times!
When I finally found the public radar access provided by NOAA, I gave Unisys the finger.
I just can't see several thousand (millions maybe?) dollars worth of websites being shut down, the people that operate them getting the boot, and the country being happy. -
Re:Excellent commentary...
CompuServe finally settled on the less unreasonable 5c per paid application that can encode GIF's, with no fee for decoders. That fee is no longer with us, as the patent has expired.
the known unisys patents (and releated 'gif tax') may have expired in 2004 or earlier, however, there is a duplicate patent (all praise the uspto!) owned by ibm that does not expire until 11 august 2006 (4,814,746).
ref:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html#venuenote
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/6/19/35919/4079
and unisys' web site states they have patents pending on 'improvements' to the now-expired patent.
ref:
http://www.unisys.com/about__unisys/lzw
so who knows if a simiilar fiasco will pop up again in the future.......
one industry does that all the time. when a profitable and popular prescription drug is about to expire and get in the hands of (legal) generic manufacturers, a "new" version of the drug is "invented" (typically the same exact forumla in an 'extended-release' form, which changes the inactive ingredients, not the drug itself) and that is enough to keep the "original" forumla from going generic. -
Re:Solaris for the masses?
What? People run Windows on big iron?
Yes, they do. You just need the right type of hardware, and the Datacenter edition of Windows.
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Re:Inspired by?
UNIVAC was the name of the computer, not the company.
Looks like you're right.
The UNIVAC was introduced by Remington Rand. Remington Rand merged with Sperry in 1955 to form Sperry Rand. Sperry and Burroughs merged in 1986 to form Unisys.
See http://www.unisys.com/about__unisys/history/index. htm -
Re:There is hope yet>I am curious about the Burroughs machine mentioned in the interview. Can anyone give me an overview of it?
ClearPath Plus Server Libra Model 580 & 590 Level Epsilon Architecture Support Reference Manual
Available at http://www.app1.unisys.com/bookstore/
Yes, it lives!
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Re:PDF
my point was if it is so open why does it include something which is patented.
The LZW patent has expired. -
MCP- it's computer history, not MS drivel.
There was an MCP Virgina and still is.
Master Control Program has been around since 1958, and was the first commercial high language OS (written in Algol, the great granddaddy of C).
http://users.rcn.com/hwbingham/security.htm
MCP was the OS that ran Burroughs' mainframes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_Corporation
And it STILL is out there on the ClearPath systems.
http://www.unisys.com/products/clearpath__servers/ clearpath__plus__mcp/operating__environment.htm
MCP lives, and it likely processed some of your financials or government data.
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Re:Green with envy
I completely agree.
For some one to not only target a plane moving at landing speed of atleast 300+ KM/h but also get inside the cockpit? May be on a bank but not during a runway approach. Oh and don't forget only the top half of the cockpit is glass in most planes. So this means the 'terrorist' must have been well ahead of the plane to get it inside.
Also on of the articles mentions in Cleveland the plane was aprox 8500ft in the air. We also have to take into consideration the cloud celling which currently is at 2000ft . So if there was cloud that day they would have been covered from the ground looking up.
So even if some how someone with a super duper laser pointer was able to place the dot with superhuman insane accuracy not just on the plane going 300Km/h (on landing approach usually 500+ on cruse) that person also managed to keep it inside the cockpit to make the pilots feel like they were being tracked? WOW that is pretty good.
Now they must have pretty good faith in the general population if they think not allowing others to puchace these lasers will make pilots safer. Its the people who have the same aptitude, that I would be worried about. Eventhough I doubt that was done souly by a steady hand some one should come up with some serious numbers because this sounds like someone is on serious drugs to accuse joe six pack for this. -
Re:The system works!!!
No question that weather.com is poor. Weather.com sensationalizes their forecasts, if the NWS says 40% chance of rain, then weather.com says 50%. If weather.com had their way, we'd experience constant blizzards, heat waves, down pours, hurricanes, and tornados. Nice average days don't sell advertising.
Personally I find http://weather.unisys.com/ to work quite well. -
OT: alternatives to weather.com
I used to think Weather.com was the coolest thing since sliced bread. Of course, it took Firefox's popup blocking along with the Adblock extension to make browsing it tolerable.
However, since discovering the following resources, I don't even bother with Weather.com anymore.
http://www.weather.gov/
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
http://weather.unisys.com/
These sites offer much more in-depth technical information and are not funded by ad revenue. -
Re:Garbage in, Garbage out...
> I don't think windows will run on a mainframe.
http://www.unisys.com/products/clearpath__servers/ clearpath__plus__os__2200/operating__system.htm
That is if you consider Unisys a Mainframe company. -
guess who runs the TSA network?
it's Unisys!
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Re:Unisys = t3h suxMostly, unisys just runs like any other company. There are a few of top-level managers worried about their stock options, a bunch of lower level managers trying to get more stock options, and some engineering and developer types that just want to do some cool stuff but nothing can get done without manager approval. Just like any other big dinosaur of a company.
Check out their 3d Visual Enterprise product. You would think that a 3D product would have some screenshots wouldn't you? Nope, it's just vaporware.
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Re:LZW check, JPEG, erm...
Take a high resolution screenshot with any complexity
Sure - JPG is better for most photos - but sharp edges, text (including high resolution screenshots of text) and the like look much better under png (bit for bit).
Slightly offtopic, but noone seems to have mentioned Unisys yet - soon we may be seeing on GNU a page similar to this one: Why There Are No GIF files on GNU Web Pages
Soon we may need a burn all jpegs day ;-) -
speaking of big news
I guess the honeymoon between M$ and Unisys is over...
http://www.unisys.com/about__unisys/news_a_events/ 08028430.htm -
Re:Unisys
Unisys will still take your money. I know at least one image software developer that still refuses to add GIF support becuase of this sort of bunk.
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LZW?
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Re:Diversity == Good; Fragmentation == Terrible
There are (probably) no 'Windows Mainframes'.
Right here. I remember giving the salesman an incredulous look when he presented this monstrosity as an alternative to a Sun machine.
Him: "It's cheaper, and has twice as much I/O as a Sun machine!"
Me: "Ok. And how about uptime?"
Him: "I'm sure it's in the upper nines range!"
Me: "You mean you haven't yet sold any of these yet?"
Him: "No, it's brand new! You're getting a sneak peek!"
Gotta love Unisys. They're one of those companies that can never seem to quite "get it". Oh, and I'd like to strangle the guy that thought that combining NT and the MCP was a better solution than just adding new functionality to the MCP. No wonder IBM ate their breakfast time and time again.
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Oh, great.
So after converting all our GIFs to JPGs in the middle of the 90s, now that the other patent has expired, we'll be converting all our JPGs back to GIFs.
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Re:That depends
So far, not one of these IP lawsuits has been be the creator or original owner of the IP -- it's always some vulture corp that bought up a dead or dying company
I can think of one: LZW used in GIF images (foreign counterparts to recently expired U.S. Patent 4,558,302). Welch assigned the patent to Sperry when he filed the application, and Sperry (new name for the same company) still owns it.
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Re:Sun can't compete with x86?
Did you ever wonder why no one sells x86 servers with more than 8 CPUs
You mean servers like this or IBM's plans detailed here? x86 servers with more than 8 processors definitely do exist, even if they are somewhat rare.
Well, one reason is the x86 architecture doesn't scale with a crap in a multiple-CPU box
That has very little to do with the processor itself and MUCH more to do with the supporting components. One problem that x86 chips have traditionally had is the lack of a high-bandwidth and low-latency bus for I/O, but with the Opteron that potential weakness is gone. Given decent supporting hardware AND software the Opteron can (and does) scale VERY well.
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Re:Google's Logo! = GIF
For the USA (where Google is), they already have. The patent expires in Europe and Japan in June.
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Interesting example of a good patent...
Patents on compression are good patents?
You mean like the LZW patent that Unisys has? Yes, I mean this one. See also here. You could have chosen a better type of patent to defend.
An interesting data point. Several years ago from a random sample it was estimated that about 70% of software patents would not actually hold up in court. (It would take me a while to track the quote down. Anyone who wants to troll through the fsb archives looking for it, can.) Some would, but most wouldn't. However portfolios of mostly invalid patents are a useful negotiating weapon since nobody wants to go through the court fees to prove patents invalid. And if you think that you'll get it granted, what incentive do you have to not seek a probably invalid patent? Of course economists are far from convinced that even legally valid patents are economically beneficial to grant.
As long as the system produces such a lopsided ratios of clearly bogus to legally tenable patents, the existence of occasional arguably reasonable patents does not justify the system as it stands. -
Re:It's a marketing hype (Cable)
virtually no problems
I guess you did say virtually no problems not completely no problems. I've had a couple of minutes of signal loss this winter for maybe 99.96% uptime.
I lost it today for about 1/2 minute when the red stuff on this map (55 dBz echos) passed overhead bringing some light hail along with the sideways rain.
The only irritation is that my multifunction remote isn't set up to control the sat box quite right. I usually use a standalone TiVo to change channels, but when the signal drops out completely, the box wants you to press channel up or down, not key in a channel number (as TiVo does).
That and my failure to notice that my son was 20 minutes "behind" real time so grabbing the right remote & pressing keys did nothing made it a bit irritating.
Not anywhere as bad as the fuzzy analog & half D-1 (352x480) soft digital on the cable co formerly known as TCI. Maybe if they'd followed through on the "high-speed internet" line on the trucks when it was AT&T broadband I'd be less annoyed, but no-one's spent any $$ on infrastructure in the last 10 years so we have no HDTV and no cable modems. Time-Warner is a whole other story...
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Re:Well DUH!
So is UniSys so until recently WSU wouldn't have been able to create a
.gif image of their work (just don't transfer the images outside of the U.S. where the patent still stands for several more months) -
Sperry-Burroughs owns the LZW patent
Sperry - gone. Burroughs - gone.
According to a FOLDOC article, Sperry merged with Burroughs to form this company. Primary consumer-visible product - here. The patent still subsists for about eight more months in Canada, Europe, and Japan.
Thier proprietary solutions by and large are dead.
I don't know about "by", but Sperry-Burroughs proprietary technology is used in a "large" number of images displayed on the World Wide Web. I'd guess that at least 90 percent of web sites, Slashdot included, use the Sperry-Burroughs proprietary product I mentioned.
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Sperry-Burroughs owns the LZW patent
Sperry - gone. Burroughs - gone.
According to a FOLDOC article, Sperry merged with Burroughs to form this company. Primary consumer-visible product - here. The patent still subsists for about eight more months in Canada, Europe, and Japan.
Thier proprietary solutions by and large are dead.
I don't know about "by", but Sperry-Burroughs proprietary technology is used in a "large" number of images displayed on the World Wide Web. I'd guess that at least 90 percent of web sites, Slashdot included, use the Sperry-Burroughs proprietary product I mentioned.
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Does Sun indemify users against third party claimsRead Sun's EULAs, I bet that either Sun absolves itself of any liability or the agreement contains loopholes like Microsoft's licenses.
In comparing the Microsoft EULA to the GPL, Microsoft's EULAs are pretty uniform when it come to exluding themselves from liability...
http://www.cyber.com.au/cyber/about/comparing_the_ gpl_to_eula.pdf
ALSO, THERE IS NO WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF TITLE, QUIET ENJOYMENT, QUIET POSSESSION, CORRESPONDENCE TO DESCRIPTION OR NON-INFRINGEMENT WITH REGARD TO THE PRODUCT.
Analysis
....Also, Microsoft disclaims that this software will not infringe on the intellectual property rights of others. This is a potentially serious issue, as has been recently shown through the legal dispute between Timeline Inc. and Microsoft. Timeline has won a recent ruling which exposes all Microsoft SQL Server developers to a serious patent encumbrance.
The Timeline Inc case bring up an important issue; while no vendor can expected to identify all potential patent violation when developing software, when the vendor does purchase and license technology from a third party, the vendor should insure that the end user/develop is not put at further risk.
Even Microsoft's May 27th changes which apply only to customers under enterprise licensing contracts, which Microsoft claims grants greater immunity, contains loop holes which greatly negate Microsoft's liability.
https://www.microsoft.com/licensing/programs/contr actupdates.asp
https://www.microsoft.com/licensing/downloads/mba. docThe new section 6 clause contain exceptions
Our obligations will not apply to the extent that the claim or adverse final judgment is based on (i) specifications you provide to us for the service deliverables; (ii) code or materials provided by you as part of service deliverables; (iii) your running of the product, fix or service deliverables after we notify you to discontinue running due to such a claim; (iv) your combining the product, fix or service deliverables with a non-Microsoft product, data or business process; (v) damages attributable to the value of the use of a non-Microsoft product, data or business process; (vi) your altering the product, fix or service deliverables; (vii) your distribution of the product, fix or services deliverable to, or its use for the benefit of, any third party; (viii) your use of our trademark(s) without express written consent to do so; or (ix) for any trade secret claim, your acquiring a trade secret (a) through improper means; (b) under circumstances giving rise to a duty to maintain its secrecy or limit its use; or (c) from a person (other than us or our affiliates) who owed to the party asserting the claim a duty to maintain the secrecy or limit the use of the trade secret. You will reimburse us for any costs or damages that result from these actions.
Loophole #1
"(ii) code or materials provided by you as part of service deliverables"This would effectively still indemnify Microsoft against most of the Timeline Inc patent claims, as it is the developer/end user's code ( even visual basic code ) which would be in violation of Timeline's patent claims.
Microsoft has a history of licensing third party code and patents in such a manner that still leaves developers and users exposed to IP threats. Even going back to the LZH/GIF Unisys patents,
http://www.unisys.com/about__unisys/lzw/
"Microsoft Corporation obtained a license under the above Unisys LZW patents in September, 1996. Microsoft's license does NOT extend to software developers or third parties
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Re:ImageMagickAssuming that you're not in one of the countries where the patent still applies
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PNG IssuesA certain popular browser doesn't handle a lot of transparent PNGs correctly. (Can you guess which one?) Erik Arvidsson has a clever workaround, but I have to question whether kludging ones web pages that way is a good idea.
Another issue I have with PNG is that some software seems to generate illegal images. I volunteer at Distributed Proofreaders and every once in a while Mozilla chokes on a page image that's an illegal PNG file. The really irritating thing is that Mozilla is actually able to read the image itself, but if it's allowed to download the very end of the file it says, "This is an illegal PNG! I can't let you look at it anymore!" I have to download the page image and read it with a less intolerant image browser. A pain.
As if that weren't enough, IIS doesn't ship with a metadata entry for PNG. Which, predicably enough, doesn't matter to IE, but screws up more compliant browsers.
Of course, none of the problems are the fault of the PNG people, who have created some very sexy technology. But until PNG images can be displayed reliably, it makes no sense to insist that everybody should migrate away from GIFs.
There's also the little detail that the notorious LZW patent has expired. That removes one of the big motivations for creating the PNG standard in the first place. Yeah, GIFs don't have as many cool features, but they're still adequate for most people's needs.
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Proprietary is no panacea, but the GPL protectsThe following was posted in various forms in reply to multipule Anti-Linux FUD articles at Zdnet/Cnet.
If the issue is the threat of lawsuits over intellectual property then corporate America and everyone else are actually in a better legal position using GPL'ed Linux than using Microsoft's products as a development platform.
Microsoft has a history of licensing third party code and patents in such a manner that still leaves developers exposed. Even going back to the LZH/GIF Unisys patents,
http://www.unisys.com/about__unisys/lzw/
"Microsoft Corporation obtained a license under the above Unisys LZW patents in September, 1996. Microsoft's license does NOT extend to software developers or third parties who use Microsoft toolkit, language, development or operating system products to provide GIF read/write and/or any other LZW capabilities in their own products (e.g., by way of DLLs and APIs)."
Microsoft also licensed database technology for Microsoft's SQL server from Timeline Inc, under similar license terms as did with Unisys. This license did not grant Microsoft the right to sublicense to third party developers to extend functionality, in some cases even restricting the use of visual basic. Unlike companies like Oracle Corporation and others, Microsoft chose a cheaper option for the license which left third party developers, users of Microsoft SQL Server,Office and other Microsoft products at risk of being sued by Timeline Inc for violation of Timeline Inc patents. Timeline Inc asked Microsoft to upgrade to a similar license used by Oracle, but Microsoft refused, so the whole issue went to court and in 2002, Timeline Inc won.
http://www.timeline.com/021903PR.htm
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/53/29419.html
While SCO has yet to provide any publicly available substantial evidence in their case against IBM and Linux, Timeline Inc has already won a US Washington Court of Appeal judgment against Microsoft in another contract dispute.
How many other cases exist where Microsoft has included third party technology in it products, but has also taken the cheaper licensing option and left developers and even users exposed to the threat of lawsuit? Due to the closed nature of the proprietary business model, how can third party developers even check?
Microsoft's products and platforms do not provide users and developers an absolute safe haven from the threat from lawsuits based on violations of intellectual property. Microsoft's EULA ( End User License Agreements ) provide the developer and end user with no protection against threat from current or future intellectual property lawsuits.
The Gnu General Public License (GPL) and Gnu Library General Public License (LGPL) are based on years of solid legal research.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/enforcing-gpl.html
Since The SCO Group has knowingly sold and distributed the GPL licensed Linux kernel and other components, it must by the terms of the GPL license, provide all those who receive the code from them an implicit license to use any intellectual property, patents or trade secrets which SCO owns and is used within the GPL'ed source code. That implicit license to that SCO intellectual property is also granted to anybody who subsequently receives the GPL source.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
The GPL only grants the right, for reasons of intellectual property infringement or contractual obligations, to stop distributing the GPL'e binaries and source code if the conditions are imposed upon you by a third party. Since The SCO Group claims ownership the intellectual property in question, it must grant all subsequent recipients of the GPL licensed source code The SCO Group h -
U.S. ONLY
Note, this only applies to the patent in the US.
License Information on GIF and Other LZW-based Technologies
"After expiration of the U.S. LZW patent on June 20, 2003, liability for patent infringement will occur only if an infringing act with respect to a product or service (e.g., developing, selling, offering to sell, making, using, distributing, downloading, exporting and/or importing) occurs in a country where the LZW patent has not expired.
Since each country has its own patent laws and rules regarding what constitutes patent infringement, effected persons may wish to seek advice from their own legal counsel." -
Re:Unisys...
They also sell Wintel supercomputers. We recently got one.
I have not had the pleasure of using it yet. Hopefully I won't have to...
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Re:What did happen to Unisys?> Unisys lost on account of being a scumsucking dirtball, and now works for minimum wage at Dell.
Yeah, if you consider $5.6B in annual revenue "minimum wage"
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Re:Unisys...
That's because Unisys is a $5.6B services company and your company is one of the ones contributing to that revenue. Congratulations! By all appearances, Unisys successfully "reinvented" themselves and the GIF patent battle doesn't seem to have harmed them at all. (For photographic images JPEG would have supplanted GIF anyway, and GIF still has a commanding lead in the annoying animated image market on the web. Despite its technical promise, PNG is still, after eight years, a fringe player.)
So, successfully extorting money from a dying patent and then going on to be a successful service company... yeah, SCO-Caldera would probably love to be the next Unisys. I'm aware the original story submitter was attempting to be ironic, but if he'd spent sixty seconds actually answering his own question about where Unisys is today he might have thought twice about it.
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Re:Software Patents
Yes, they chose to protect their patent even on readers. However, in their statement on the matter they state plainly that there are circumstances under which they will GIVE without charge FREE a license. Unisys
Now, I haven't called them up, but I'm not a "open source representative" I don't even speak for myself some days. BUT perhaps if someone would e-mail or fax them for a more clear explaination. -
Re:difference from a PC
Open your eyes buddy, times are a changing...hot-swap PCI on "PC" servers has existed for years and works quite reliably.
PCI buses on "PC" servers are far superior to anything from Sun today, max bandwidth from Sun is only 66Mhz/64-bit, most PC servers offer multiple PCI-X buses - 100Mhz/64-bit that are almost twice as fast. Proliant DL760
You can hot-swap memory on "PC" servers for the last year and a half IBM x440 with ChipKill (AKA Raid 1 Memory)...better than anyone else out there.
And scaleability goes to 32-way for 32-bit ES7000and 64-way for Intel Itanium Altix 3000
As for hot swapping CPUs...god luck on a Sun server, technically you could make it work...practically it's useless today. You have to stop your apps (that's great for HA isn't it?) shrink your domain (if it's bigger then 4 CPUs) isolate the faulty CPU, swap it, resize the domain...then (this is the critical part) restart all you apps so that they recognize the newly added CPU and memory...again technically it works, practically speaking just because the OS is still alive doesn't really matter...no 3rd party apps can cope with this fudging with their memory and CPUs...
The only systems out there that can truly cope with this type of activity are mainframes and Tandem / NonStop solutions... -
So where do you buy these?
I found Unisys has some 32-way IA-32 some machines but they only support Windows (and for this kind of money the vendor is going to damn well support my OS).
Who else makes a 32-way system? Does anybody have recommendations? What do these things cost? With a good set of scripts and/or something like MPI a rack of 16 2-way servers is nearly trival to manage and utilize, so the integrated systems neeed to be around $25K to be interesting. -
Re:Pray that Microsoft is *NOT* liable
Wrong, anything released into the public can be viewed & played with. You way not be legally allowed to redistribute it (copyright), use it for profit (patents), etc., but you most certainly see & play with it.
Take for example, the GIF plugin for the GIMP - unless I have a Unisys patent licence, I'm technically not allowed to use the plugin to publish GIFs. That does not stop me in ANY way from reviewing, editing, and redistributing it. -
Re:Solaris
the machines windows supports are mostly just too small to make any serious use of VMs.
You can buy a 32-Xeon Windows box today, if you want to, and they're only going to get bigger. -
Re:competition
Though now it seems AMD is taking it easy for awhile, so that benefit may have been short-lived.
Hell yeah I wish I could have such a relaxed time, hanging around all day doing litle more the designing an entire new x86 chip with new instructions and a totall new platform design, getting test silicon out, squashing bugs in that, working with vendors like via which couldn`t survive if it wasn`t for you being easy on CPU bus IP issue compared to others and other chipset designers which need loads of help becouse they are new to the chipset arena or just wanna scale your platform way beond what you was thinking of when you started your "lets add 32 bits, how hard can that be" adventure while you are short on cash.
This just when your main competitor has just done the imposible (rather then updating the same boring pentium2 design, design a chip that makes no sense whatsoever except for one thing, upping clock speeds just as fast as consumers can afford and marketing can market).
And all of this while you try to inovate on "normall chips" to (pxa and memory) that all of a sudden noone wants anymore becouse just while you where bussy negotiating you way trough cross licensing agreements with intel then there is an "economic downturn" (hired all these bright people that think up intergrated memory controlers and stuff but none of them can think of such a simple thing).
Then there is the small issue of having to get rid of 10-20% of your staff just after you milion dollar production line was at risk of getting washed away with the rest of dresden, but overall quite relaxed. -
Not if Cher has anything to do with it
Just a note, that patent runs out in a couple months, then GIF will be patent free!
U.S. Patent 4,558,302 encumbers LZW compression until late June 2003. On July 4, I will celebrate not only the independence of the United States from the United Kingdom but also the independence of LZW compression from those who are not willing to license its use in free software.
But we still can't count chickens yet. Congress could pass a Cherilyn Lapierre Patent Term Extension Act. If Sonny could get a copyright extension onto the books in the USA, certainly Cher could be a spokeswoman for the pharmaceutical industry to demand longer patent terms.
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Worship at the Temple of Burroughs
Unfortunately, the Ace's Hardware article is depressingly accurate about the state of the mainframe in 2002.
But once upon a time there was a company that beat IBM technology like a drum- Burroughs.
IBM invented hard drives (DASD). Burroughs invented multi-programming environments, virtual memory, the first OS written to a high-level language (ALGOL) and a host of other innovations.
Here is the best overview with plenty o' links, here is official Unisys propaganda if you want to poke around, and here
is a Multics guy giving props.
To give you an idea of how advanced Burroughs was, we were able to run DMSII database dumps to tape while the database was active and did perform successful recoveries off those dumps- in 1985.
The console was magnificent, the built-in system logging was a dream, we fired off batch backups and recoveries from plain-English commands at the console, CANDE is a near perfect development environment (I still laugh at Vi vs. Emacs- morons), and WFL makes JCL look like the silly resource batcher it is.
Unfortunately Burroughs never had a decent sales force, then they merged with Sperry to form Unisys (to enrich Blumenthal, May His Name Be Forever Cursed).
They still make mainframes of a sort, A-series emulators that run on monster PC-cluster machines. These same machines are the cluster boxen for NT and Unix you may have seen around, and they are still big in banking, and make their money in services.
Just remember that IBM mainframes are not the only ones around, but they are dominant. -
Re:good grief
Umm... There's also Unisys and their ClearPath Plus range.
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Re:SGI's Gettin' Some
Didn't you read the article about the SGI system running Linux on 64 Itanium 2 processors the other day??
You could always order a Unisys ES7000 with 32 CPUs. They have 3 models. A Xeon one, an Itanium 2 one and one that can use both.
If you don't think 512 processors and 1TB ram in 4 racks is interesting then I wonder what Intel could do for you.
Most of the applications for this type of platform are completely custom or already written for these types of platforms. There is a reason the high end stuff has gone to Sun, Alpha, IBM and SGI. They have much higher scalibility without the latencies introduced by clusters of smaller Intel boxes and they are extremely matured in these areas. Commodity hardware is great but not always the right tool for the job. -
Better than HDTV
First:
This is the largest front page post I've ever seen...
Second:
HDTV has the Dolby AC-3 technology in the standard. That means Dolby will get a cut off of every TV with a built in digital tuner and every HDTV tuner box. It also means royalties on many broadcast tools. I don't know the license regulations, but it may also mean a cut on every show that uses AC-3. Sucky, but also, time to buy Dolby stock.
Just imagine if the web had turned out this way. Companies keep trying to move things into their corner, even without standards bodies helping. What is Quicktime became the video standard on the web? I love the format, but it's also been hell getting Linux to support it. The web has been burned this way before. Everything will be okay, as long as we burn back. -
Re:Agreed...
Someone tell me[....]
Ok.
Although I cannot confirm that it is SRAM.