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Slashback: Tenacity, Freedomware, Lem
Honest, I'm not dead. Again. silvaran writes "A clarification on CNet News indicates that IBM will not stop supporting or selling OS/2 as mentioned previously. Says IBM spokesman Steve Eisenstadt, 'As long as our customers want OS/2, we will support them... We don't have plans to withdraw OS/2.' The withdrawal notice lists several hundred components or software packages that will no longer be available, but OS/2 itself will still be offered."
Like Marshall MacLuhan in Annie Hall. tree writes "The Boston Globe has a really interesting interview with Stanislaw Lem, author of the 1961 novel "Solaris": he is a bit baffled about the latest movie adaptation. In any event, it's a great read for fans of Lem."
They win, GNU Win, we all win. Shwag writes "Last week I downloaded TheOpenCD after it was on Slashdot. I learned about all kinds of great free (as in speech) software. I then searched for more and found out about GNU Win which is a win32 free software cd but it has way more software! Yay! This is a really great way to show people the benefits of free software and get them ready for transitioning to linux."
A platform built from an Acorn. An anonymous reader writes "The (London) Guardian's Online section reports today on the new Ionix PC earlier Slashdotted for being the first desktop to run Intel's XScale processor. The Guardian concentrates on how the new machine may revive the fading fortunes of the once-pioneering Risc OS, but also makes mention of the fact it is ditching old proprietary Acorn subsystems."
Woe to the boonie dwellers, until enough balloons are in place. Avenger writes "Another DSL provider is getting out of the market. Hughes Electronics has announced that they will no longer be providing high-speed Internet services. Over 160,000 users will be affected. As it stands right now, they still will be providing connectivity via DirecPC."
But it seemed like such a great do-it-yourself idea! adagioforstrings writes "You may recall last year Home Depot announced they were deploying Linux at 90,000 point-of-sale terminals across the nation. Well, time went by and no more was heard about it...until now, when Home Depot announced they would be upgrading their POS systems with technology from NCR Corp., and 360 Commerce Inc. and ... Microsoft Corp."
I realize you were trolling with your anti-IBM remarks, but I'll bite anyway.
Considering that OS/2 came out way back when Windows 3.1 was around, it's quite a remarkable OS. It supports multithreading as well as various other important and fairly advanced features, which is neat since it had these features nearly a decade ago.
It's important to remember that OS/2 is not Windows, nor does IBM want it to be. It is a very different environment that does take some getting used to. There are a lot of things I like about using OS/2, but there are a few things I like about using Windows too. One of the nicest things
about OS/2 is its ability to coexist with other operating systems on the same computer.
Now that really is a freedom of choice, one that many love about using Linux with Windows or *BSD with Windows or even dual-booting Windows/OS X.
They're buying some Microsoft systems for point of sale.
Home Depot used to be one of those Java poster children that they trotted out at JavaOne, but I never saw any of it show up in the stores. To this day their systems, except for the actual registers, are straight out of the 70's. I think they're terminals connected to an HP/UX box.
Just an evil thought I had.
were you expecting to see a sig here? perhaps you'd rather see the inside of an ambulance!
I'm an ex-employee of Home Depot. I worked in the IT department.
Yes, the registers, and practically all of the store systems, are connected to one of many different types of HP-UX boxes, depending on how old the store is. I heard tales of SSC (store support center, the HD headquarters just outside of Atlanta, GA) IT employees opening up those boxes and finding them totally packed with dust. As in, no more dust could fit in the case of the HP-UX box. But it still worked!
When I worked there, Java was all the rage and HD had lots of employees churning out millions of lines of shitty Java code that did a whole lot of nothing. Much of the real work was still done on MVS (that the IBM mainframe) in JCL, assembly, and whatnot. The UNIX work was in HP-(S)UX in, of all things, Informix 4GL.
When I was leaving, HD was seriously flirting with Linux. They had lots of cool linux machines running in one of the labs. I felt bad about leaving, but not really, since I was leaving to go work at a Linux shop doing Perl. HD hated Perl, or anything else that was "unsupported."
HD IT managers actually did a purge of all rouge Linux machines they found on the network maybe about a year or so before I was hired.
In my opinion, any flirting that HD has done with MSFT is due to the new CEO, Bob Nardelli. Talking to my old HD friends has revealed that he's making all sorts of really stupid changes, such as trying to turn 50% of all store employees into part-timers. (What? How are you supposed to have SMEs with so many part-timers?)
But before anyone forms any real opinions about HD, remember: HD is a retail shop, not a technology shop. People in IT there were, every few months or so, demanded that they "prove their worth." As far as the head retailers were concerned, IT was nothing more than a "cost center." If you want to work in technology, don't choose retail. You're going to be disappointed.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
This is a really great way to show people the benefits of free software and get them ready for transitioning to linux
Either that, or they will realise that it is not Linux that is providing this 'great software', but GNU, and it is also available on Windows. So why bother to switch when they can have the best of both worlds: Good GUI, and all the same free GNU software thats available under Linux.
I.O.U One Sig.
While Solaris might be the most famous book from Lem, I much prefer "The Cyberiad". The book is a mixture of Douglas Adams and Monthy Python, but at a higher level. Science fiction meets Guildernstein and Rosencratz.
Here are a few quotes:
"Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned with what does exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely different way
Pastoral poem on love and tensor algebra (with a little topology and higher calculus):
"Come let us hasten to a higher plane
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn
Their indices bedecked from one to n
Commingled in an endless Markov chain."
"One day Trurl the constructor put together a machine that could create anything starting with n. When it was ready, he tried it out, ordering it to make needles, then nankeens and negligees, which it did, then nail the lot to narghiles filled with nepenthe and numerous other narcotics. The machine carried out his instructions to the letter. Still not completely sure of its ability, he had it produce, one after the other, nimbuses, noodles, nuclei, neutrons, naphtha, noses, nymphs, naiads and natrium. This last it could not do..."
They're evil because they're cash registers run an OS I don't like!
</SARCASM>
What's that about freedom of choice again?
Here's a corporation that actually considered the alternative, and for whatever their reasons, right or wrong, decided it was inferior.
How about instead of condemning them, the community looks to the reasons that linux lost a fair fight and addresses them?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Much of the real work was still done on MVS (that the IBM mainframe) in JCL, assembly, and whatnot.
The other day, I had a look at a new looking terminal in the Lowes. It was some kind of IBM box, running X. The main aplication seemed to be .... a 3270 emulator. Ta-da! the sturdy old background process continues to run but they now have a reasonable desktop to add other applications if they feel like it. No hideous CompUSA adverts blaring, just a nice clean window manager. The terminal, by the way, looked to have all the expected IBM toughness. It was pleasing to see.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"HD is a retail shop, not a technology shop. ...As far as the head retailers were concerned, IT was nothing more than a 'cost center.'"
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Home Depot will never be as big as Wal-Mart. Home Depot thinks of IT as a hole that the company is constantly pouring money into; Wal-Mart relentlessly uses IT to further its goals of getting the lowest cost from suppliers. (The definitive article on Wal-Mart and technology.)
Home Depot will never be a leader in the industry if it continues to view IT as an expense rather than an investment. Your post was an excellent example of how retailers tend to forget that technology, when used properly, can not only form the core of the business, but strengthen existing product lines. Home Depot's executive staff most likely looks at Wal-Mart and ask "How do they do that?" The answer lies in Wal-Mart's aggressive stance on technology adoption.
In fact, Wal-Mart and Home Depot are even compared here, where Wal-Mart's CIO is asked whether or not it will make a difference if competitors use RFID tags. (RFID tags are Wal-Mart's next big frontier.) "The challenge is to keep innovating faster than the competition can copy us," he says.
If what you're saying really is true of Home Depot, expect Wal-Mart to keep swallowing Home Depot's business. Wal-Mart has never labeled itself as "just a retail shop," as you label Home Depot. Home Depot doesn't have the competitive advantage, nor does it sound like they know where to spend to get that advantage. I expect that Wal-mart will remain a leader for some time to come in the retail space. This quote sums up what you're seeing nicely:
"'I think Wal-Mart views technology in a different light than most retailers,' says Peter Abell, retail research director at AMR Research. 'It's not only an integral part of the company, but it's where the leaders of the company can come from.'"
This is the direction in which Home Depot must go in order to become truly successful at lowering costs and increasing productivity. Unfortunately for Home Depot, Wal-Mart is already there, and getting further and further ahead...
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Yeah, I love this book. What I find most amazing about it is that it was originally written in Polish, and somehow all that poetry still comes out amazing. The one you quoted goes on for another 7 verses, and each damn one rhymes. Although that's probably a much of a tribute to the translator as is is to Lem himself.
I think my favorite story from that book is the one where Trurl creates the world's stupidest, most stubborn thinking machine that insists 2 + 2 = 7, and tries to kill Trurl when he won't agree that it's not 4.
What if life is just a side effect of some other process and God has no idea we exist?
There was a story in the local newspaper last week about how Home Depot (they are building another store in town) had originally planned to use Linux for the self-serve system but had switched to Windows because they didn't want to "limit their options" or "lock themselves into something" as hilarious as that is. I won't be buying stock in Home Depot. If the Windows checkouts work as well as the voting machines, I'm sure they'll be popular in Florida. I'll be going to Ace.
One of the big problems with Lem's novels is that the characters tend to be cold, intellectual cardboard cutouts with no personalities. I can't motivate myself to read a 300-page novel about characters I can't even tell apart. The robots in the Cyberiad, ironically, are a lot more interesting as people.
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