Slashdot Mirror
End Of reality For Silicon Graphics
Zurk writes: "SGI is turning off its famous employee web server http://reality.sgi.com on August 15th. The machine has been running for nearly 10 YEARS and has resulted in a number of really kewl IRIX applications (and some linux ones as well) distributed from employee web pages at SGI. Games/source code/pictures/irix tips and examples of working life at this once great company will no longer be available." Seems like the sort of thing that every business ought to maintain, for employee sanity and general niceness -- too bad this one is about to go.
That's worse than the Linux companies are doing, isn't it?
I've been using IRIX (4D25, Indy, Indigo2) desktops nearly exclusively for 10 years - rock solid performers that are nearly trouble free (blow the dust out every other year or so). It's the only system I've used that I can leave running on my desktop and get 500-600 day uptimes. A few Solaris desktops have almost done as well. It's only the last year or so that the X86 Linux desktops are stable for that long, mostly due to the NSF and X server coding finally getting a lot better, but still not as stable as IRIX.
Any unix wannabe sysadmin can administer these systems - they have had easy GUI admin for years, long before the rest. Only WinDoze admins have problems with systems this easy to admin, as well as being able to RTFM.
the feedback page goes to the old admin for reality who was laid off. use : reality-closure@sgi.com
"The G4 is one of the BEST processors out there.
Have you ever heard of Altivec?"
Despite what Apple marketing tells you, there is more to a CPU than just a vector unit. Altivec is a pretty good example of a vector unit, but its hardly a revolutionary feature.
"(where's Photoshop for SGI?)"
Right here on the Indy I'm typing this on, actually. Pretty moronic choice of examples there. What's your next question? Where is Maya for SGI?
Despite your breathless and uninformed Mac cheerleading, I still can't purchase a G4 mac that is even remotely comparable to SGI's higher end visualization systems. And the vast majority of ex-SGI shops are moving to Linux, not OSX.
But I suppose I really shouldn't expect some junior photoshop jockey to know much about hardware.
Reality has always been maintained by volunteers. Recently admining the thing has become an enormous hassle and nobody seems willing to do the job for very long. This is the reason I'm told that Reality is being brought down.
It no longer exists at http://Reality.SGI.com/cbrady_denver/memtest86/
Now it lives at www.MemTest86.com
Thanks Chris,
Ken Hendrickson
bash-2.03$ wget -r reality.sgi.com
~AC
The REASON they're on life support is that IRIX is joke...
Only partially true... each version of IRIX was always released *far* before it was ready (compared to other commercial Unicies, at least). IRIX has traditionally had poor security with its default installation (always assuming that good connectivity on a non-hostile network is also the default).
But once patched and hardened, IRIX and MIPS hardware really shines. It's far smaller and more efficient than Slowaris and the memory bandwidth of even *ancient* Indigo2's is breathtaking, even by today's standards.
Along with Compaq's recent statements regarding burying the DEC/Compaq Alpha CPU line and replacing it with Intel Itanium, it seems that the industry is heralding the supremacy of the crappiest, least efficient architectures (Sun USPARC, PowerPC-POWER, Intel Itanium) and the death of the best (MIPS, DEC Alpha).
This proves that aggressive marketing/salesmanship will always reign supreme over superior engineering.
:-/
Nvidia is not a spin-off from SGI. Nvidia sure has a lot of ex-SGI employees, but it ain't a spin-off.
There is no reason that the word 'kewl' should appear in a writeup on /. You guys should reject articles when the writer is thick with the stench of suck.
http://reality.sgi.com/csp/
In terms of having good product but poor marketing, SGI reminds me a lot of DEC, another three-letter acronym company. Alpha was way ahead of its time. There can be no doubt that hardware "creep" is hurting SGI (i.e. the gulf between low-end, commodity, hardware and high end SGI stuff is becoming smaller).
Indeed! All of the companies that have extensive and solid marketing (Sun, Apple, Intel, Microsoft) are the ones with the worst technology.
Unfortunately, it's the innovative, engineering-focused companies like DEC and SGI that have the worst marketing, hoping that the merits of their products will market themselves...
In the fickle consumer-space dominated by MBAs and technically-deficient CIO/CTOs, companies like DEC and SGI lose.
Who will play the role with SGI that Compaq played with DEC? IBM?
If what Compaq did with DEC Alpha is any indicator, then any acquisition of SGI by [Sun,IBM] would also probably infer that the buyer will kill any innovative SGI technology because it would:
For SGI, an acquisition by Sun/IBM would result in much the same. SGI was already transitioning off MIPS anyways but ccNUMA, MIPSpro compiler and XFS/LVM technology would either be one less competitive threat or a technological advantage.
As you can surmise, I have very little confidence in the technical expertise of Sun, Apple or IBM compared to SGI or DEC :-/
Likewise, I also have very little confidence in MBAs, bean counters and those idiots who believe that market forces create anything innovative or intelligent ;-)
Slashdot readers may appreciate this excerpt of Ken Olsen, founder and former CEO of Digital Equipment:
-davidu
# Hack the planet, it's important.
That's what I thought when i first read the /. story, but the Machine Info page said it had recently been upgraded, so i doubt its uptime is actually 10 years...
---
If so, what's the chances of getting a few CD-ROM's of it... it'd be definitely something I'd want to hang on to, personally.
reality.sgi.com has been a friend of mine.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
There was an announcement sent out a few weeks back:
The machine is still up, but it's a sign of a very similar situation to that at SGI - or at least that's what it looks like.For the record - SCO laid me off over a year ago, but my account on ocston is still there. The machine isn't actually maintained by SCO, but they pay (paid?) for the hardware and bandwidth - when the layoffs happened, the ocston admins announced that they wouldn't be kicking people off who'd been laid off. Respect to them for that.
Paranoia isn't an infectious condition, it's a way of life
Umm, SGI jumped on the Linux bandwagon too, for example their work on a journalling file system. That hasn't paid off for them either. It remains to be seen if IBM will make any money there either.
What are you smoking? Only reality.sgi.com is going away.
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
It took a bit of digging but I found a page with this explanation:
Will we ever see your homepage return, more specifically the "fire, explosions, and antics" section? I'd be glad to put a mirror of it on the extra space I have in my home account...
I'm not sure... maybe but honestly it was really out of date. It was kind of funny originally but it's over 4 years old now...
--
generated by http://lavarand.sgi.com/cgi-bin/corpspeak.cgi
To: fans of reality.sgi.com
From: bean counters
Date: Sat Jul 7 13:09:57 PDT 2001
Subject: immenent death/dismemberment
An OEM scripting language negotiates the mergers, on a going-forward basis. For us to grow, we absolutely have to develop scripting languages. Due to the meta-services and paradigm shifts, what has changed is the pace of change.
We absolutely have to develop a solution as well. Given current realities, communication empowers the Strategic Initiative. Having a plug-in that is fiscal, it follows that data disseminate a prominent suite of tools. As always, goals are the team.
It doesn't cost them any significant amount of money to keep up, so why are they doing this?
:-(.
Seems to me this is bad for employee morale, and that's going to be bad enough as it is
D
----
Does anyone else remember a page on reality that had the details of an SGI employee purchasing an insanely large magnifying lens and using it to melt stuff? I thought I saw it about 3 years ago. That story was the basis for most of my opinions about SGI as a company. :-)
Well, at least this story has a silver lining :)
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
So I am looking for visualization solutions and
it ain't gonna be SGI 'cause they may not be there
in ten years. So who else can render 120 million
triangles per second (that's real, not zero pixel
triangles, shaded, lit by four lights or more and
textured with 1024x1024 texture)?
"Treat your customers like crap"
THAT must be why Wal-Mart is doing so good!
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Soon Going Insolvent.
In 1999, I contracted at SGI for a few months. Since I had an Indy R5K with a webcam, I took the opportunity to post a little "Ciannait's office" page on reality.
Ever since I contracted there, I've been known to reference The Annotated Aerial View of the Cray Research Park as evidence that yes, I worked there. I was in Building F, in the supercomputing department.
Despite my waste of bandwidth site on reality, the creative and intelligent people at SGI used it for all sorts of things. SGI folks are demoralized enough as it is, and I feel for them, considering that this resource is being taken away. What's next, the end of Ducky Day?
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.
Looking at the new SGI logo is like having a 10 pound roast pulled out of your ass with a plastic fork.
SGI has been hovering around around a dollar since May. They've been steadily eroding since their plan to make money building high-end NT/x86 workstations just isn't working out. I hate to say it, but reality.sgi.com may not be the only server they're turning off.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
...it'll be down in half an hour. The quickest way to kill a webserver; post a link on slashdot.
Cleanstick.org: Dumb weblog about nothing
The page says that content should be moved prior to the shutdown. Perhaps some of these interesting projects can be mirrored/hosted elsewhere? It would be a shame to see it all just disappear. I'm not sure how much disk space would be needed or if the FTP archives are going to go down as well, but certainly the most important projects could find a new home.
This reminds me of This past 4th of july. We threw an SGI Indigo 2 out of a third story window onto concrete. That glorious box just dented and bounced!!!! If their staff can build such rock stable pieces of equipment then dammit. Oh well.... Atleast SGI will still have their Lava Lamp Random Number generator page up. http://lavarand.sgi.com !!!!
--------========+++Dont Feed The Lab Techs+++========--------
I spent about 30 minutes on this page...
_ essays.html
http://reality.sgi.com/chinster_studio/html/photo
I installed gcc and simple programs will compile, but just about anything that needs kernel headers -- won't compile ...
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
Nice tidbit of info, but what is the reason(s) they are turning off the machine?
It's hyperbole to say that this is bad when it may be the case that SGI is going to replace it with a better machine or an improved program...
People say, "Jimmy, are you mad God created retarded people?", and i say, "No, i like President Bush." - SouthPark
Moderators need an additional choice: "Karma Whore" for people who cut-and-paste articles as their comments!
It was grand--he made a four foot by three foot refracting lens out of a block of glass. I don't know how he ground and polished that huge hunk of glass, but he made a rather odd-looking rectangular refracting lens mounte quite high in a mobile wooden frame, with the point of convergence far enough from the ground to keep it from starting fires when out in the sun. Our astronomy class got to play with it on a bright day, and it's amazing what a large refractor can do. We got a can of Mountain Dew to come to a quick boil, and of course the refractor vaporized the coloring from the outside of the aluminum can in short order. Lighting my cigar in it was instantaneous of course, though I did manage to scorch my knuckles painfully in the process (no real damage, but--ouch!).
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
The classic lavarand site (random numbers via Lava Lite Lamps), which is hosted on reality, is going away as well.
We are planning to bring on-line a and improved version of LavaRnd (open sourced and patent-free) at www.LavaRnd.org hopefully before reality goes away.
chongo (was here)
SGI is having a hard time because they are selling computers like the OCtane 2 (400 Mhz MIPS) for $28,000. Yes I know that a current MIPS proc is much faster per Mhz than almost any other proc and that there is alot of bandwidth inside those sweet looking cases, but what is going to have more power, 1 Octane, or an entire lab of Athalon + Geforce 3's ?
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
How about you tell us why its being taken down? I mean, is it because of budget problems, or is it due to a change in management?
Why does Slashdot keep using the old cube logo for SGI? The glory days of SiliconGraphics (and thus, the cube logo) are long gone. The x86/PC days are here along with the fitting 'sgi' logo. Quit using the cube.
(6.4 was almost a rogue port of 6.2 to support the 10k proc)
The R10K (MIPS R10000) was supported as far back as "IRIX 5.3 Including R10K" in 1995. But I agree about 6.4 (as well as 6.3 for O2)... rogue port indeed. Luckilly 6.5 has been great, especially the quarterly updates that slowly roll in new features and fix the bugs. Heavily tested, too (SGI stays about 1.5 quarters ahead of their users, heavily testing each new release on their own machines first).
I [heart] IRIX 6.5
(now at 6.5.12!)
97... are you running 6.4?? I don't believe 6.2 supported the Octane 10k procs, and 97 would be pretty early for 6.5.
. html) that should give you everything that you might need outside of gcc (linker, header files, etc).
On freeware.sgi.com under gcc they have a link to a page on Developer Central (http://www.sgi.com/developers/devtools/apis/irix
If you aren't there already, you really should see about getting Irix 6.5; SGI cleaned up lots of messes (and added a few.. nsd). But you get snmp, file ACL's, NFS, etc. there are just lot's of enhancements in 6.5 (6.4 was almost a rogue port of 6.2 to support the 10k proc). It's only 600 bucks, you get lots of stuff for you money. But if possibly you check out the above you should be able to do pretty much anything you need to.
As a side note, if a compile fails, I've had best luck getting it to go by adding a couple of CFLAGS when using 3rd party apps from the -n32 (or -64 depending upon CPU) & -cckr; I normally use these on the Irix cc compiler but should also work on gcc.
Good luck, happy compiling
What exactly is the problem you are/were having. Using them for years I can say Irix is my favorite, as long as people are willing to *not* use the GUI for administration (elsewise you are really limiting yourself) it can't be beat (give me "inst" over any other rpm, aptget, pkgadd crap).
Are you having a performance issue?? Memory, CPU, disk I/O? More than likely it's a simple thing that you don't know about, or has been fixed in the past 4 years.
Irix must work properly/reliably for lots of people or else they wouldn't continue to sell their thousand proc plus single image configurations. You can't have downtime or not have it work exactly the way you want it when you are 30 days in to a 60 day calculation.
The *REAL* reason SGI is floundering is because for years they could never market themselves out of a paper bag. You can have the best stuff in the world, but if your sales force doesn't quite get it...
Check out the Segfault story about this too.
Well, yeah, it is really strange, considering that people tend to use huge e-mail attachments, when it would save a lot of resources dumping it on an URL (behind basic authentication if needed), and send the URL instead. If this had been practiced, most companies could save a lot. So, closing down the employee webserver just don't make any sense from a resource management perspective either.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
What version of Irix are you running?
Irix 6.5 comes with the kernel headers that you need for free.
maybe you could contact your local SGI office to see if that machine is entitled to run Irix 6.5, and if it is, where to get a media set from.
Once you have that, then you can use GCC to compile whatever you need.Alternatively, there is a good selection of freeware for SGIs at http://freeware.sgi.com
That includes a quite large amount of GPL software in binary form for you to download and install
meow! Maria
It just goes to show you that full-service customer support will only get you in trouble. "Treat your customers like crap," I told them years ago. "They'll respect you more that way." But they wouldn't listen. You have a $15k graphics board go hinky on you? They'll drop ship it with a moment's notice.
My hat is off to the beautiful people at sgi. They did the support thing right and are paying the price for it.
When I die, I hope to go to the place most like sgi tech support.
Let's not forget another SGI-boosted website that originally started up at reality.sgi.com which is the International Obfuscated C Contest . The contest has now moved from SGI to its own domain www.ioccc.org hosted by Plaidworks(??).
Scroogle
KK: LavaRand, in haiku form, what do you think about the end of reality?
LR: new stuff eternal /
nuclear mighty jolt shy /
fish ginormous wail
KK: Beautiful words, LavaRand. Back to you, Taco.
... find it odd that Segfault got the scoop on this little tidbit 3 days in advance of slashdot :-D
I wish I had a sig, I wish I had a sig, I wish I had a sig, oh, wait...
I kinda sad to see SGI starting to turn out the lights. I have an old Indy system that still kicks ass, got the kwel little camara and a built in ISDN modem. Its been serving up webpages for 6 years with about 97% uptime!
"Get them before they get....
While looking around reality.sgi.com, i bumped into this page...
:)
Nichice disk usage meter, but check out the date marked on the top of the page, when I read it, it said 07/07/19101, SGI still hasnt got the Y2K bug sorted out? TWO years late?
It's a wonder they're still going
Mark.
--
Cat: The other white meat.