On the subject of Alphas in retail outlets, it would be darned nice if the availablity of Slot B boards made this feasible. I've met some people who work for retail chains who would like to offer Alphas but don't know how to go about it and are somewhat frightened by the cost of motherboards.
32bit? No x86 native vs Alpha native.
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1GHz Alphas
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All Alpha NT apps are 32bit. FX!32 is not for 32bit apps its for NT x86 native apps. If your running NT on an Alpha you should be running the Alpha native version, not the intel x86 version, that would be foolish. SQL, Exchange and most of the other important server side apps are available in Alpha native versions.
Re:The South--er, I mean the Alpha shall rise agai
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1GHz Alphas
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I don't know where they got that, maybe DEC forgot to submit their benchmarks for consideration. The 1998 Alpha 21164a benchmarks beat the pants off the P2 and even today's P3 550. For that matter some of the SPARC and PA-RISC processors are way faster than intel.
A close relative of mine is making 6 figures as a contract technical recruiter. There are placement services that pay administrative assistants $30k a year or less to filter resumes but they will not serve you well. As L1zard K1n6 says, they play the game and have their choice of geeks, but we also have a choice, don't submit to just one placement agency and don't rely on or recommend those that don't serve your needs. The market is a double edged sword, use it to your advantage.
Re:The suits were the geeks till they wised up
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Feature:Geek Jobs
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Those are the exceptions, not the rule. Most suits can't find their way around a computer with both hands, a compass and a sherpas guide.
Redhat isn't putting all of they're stock up for sale just a small portion, so there is no way for microsoft to buy that much even if they were incline to.
Regarding the GPL, Redhat does not choose the license under which Linux is distributed, Linus and the other developers chose that a long time ago. If Redhat wants to distribute any code based on Linux they must use the license Linux comes with - the GPL.
TF2 has far more in common with Starsiege-Tribes than Battlezone, Uprising or Urban Assault. It really belongs in the First Person Shooter category as this is the market it sells to. Don't let the addition of strategic teamplay elements confuse the issue. Q3 will probably have the lock on "deathmatch" style play but TF2 will bring some really cool teamplay to the competition.
Half-Life is not a mod. Half-life's engine uses code licensed from id software and is loosely based on the quake engine. About 60% of that code is all new. Half-life was a standalone game and will not run with nor be proted to the Q3 engine. That being said, Half-life is still an incredible and original game which I would recommend ahead of Q3 for first time buyers.
Umm... no. Team Fortress Classic is TF with minor engine based differences, and its free (as in beer). TF=free mod for quake, TFC=free mod ported to half-life.
Team Fortress 2 is a standalone game based on a greatly modified version of the Half-life engine. It is highly anticipated in the 3Dfps industry and probably the biggest threat to Q3's domination.
Now I finally can justify converting my Dual P2 from NT to Linux and running Q3test on it. And to think my friends told me to yank one CPU and go with 95.
Those SPEC numbers are very conservative (typical of DEC estimates, they're engineers not marketing). The 500 MHz 21264 in.35u is already in the high 50s for SPECfp.
Compaq has no plans to move the Alpha to the proliant case, the engineering costs and FCC certs are to high when they have well engineered DEC chassis to use. All of the new products are branded "Compaq Alphaserver". There will be some crossovers between the Digital storageworks product and the Compaq classic disk storage. The Compaq Alphaserver ES40 will be the first beneficiary of this with both types of disk shelves available.
The profit margin on Alpha based systems is far greater than anything Compaq ever saw with its intel based products. I don't think they understood what cash cows VMS and Digtal Unix on Alpha were until they saw the numbers after buying the company.
Dgital's poor earnings performance was primarily due to mismanagment and lack of vision not poor alpha sales. Without the Alpha keeping it afloat I have no doubt that Digital would have gone under years ago.
SGI spun off MIPS but they still use the MIPS processor in everything but their low end stuff. Sun doesn't own the SPARC plant but noone doubts their commitment to RISC. HP has always been dependent on Intel for CPU fab so its not suprising that they partnered with intel for their next generation CPU. They never had any intention of going with x86 CISC type CPUs. Most of the system Vendors have gotten out of the silicon business because the costs of remaining competitive are to high. Only companies that specialize in microprocessor fab can affor to invest $1billion everytime they want to upgrade their plant. Outsourcing your silicon fab makes economic sense, dumping your enterprise architecture for commodity consumer CPUs makes no sense at all.
If Merced were here now and faster than the Alpha, then maybe Compaq could justify making the switch, but current generation alphas are faster than Merced will be when it arrives.
As for HP's Merced moves that is a huge blunder. They were telling their customers that in two years when Merced arrives it would be "just as fast" as the PA-RISC systems they use now. Yeah, throw out your infrastructure and buy a whole new architecture with no significant performance gains and fewr applications, that just didn't fly with the customers and HP eventually caught on.
Don't put too much stock in those benchmarks. They don't actually measure scalability or enterprise readiness. It is well known that among MCSEs that NT doesn't scale well past 3-4 CPUs. You need the far more expensive NTserver enterprise edition if you want to get up to eight on the Alpha and even then the performance scaling is nothing like linear. From the first tests coming out on the 8-way Penguin Computing systems, the 2.2.x kernel scales reasonably well on eight CPUs. The limiting factor on better scalability appears to be an I/O bottleneck after about six processors are utilized. Those tests were run using a database (Oracle?) to create the load, so perhaps with a less I/O intensive load such as rendering, the scalability would be even better.
Remember, most of Digital's service revenues come from servicing Alpha-based accounts. Compaq paid over $9billion for Digital and has invested hundreds of millions in new R&D for the continuing digital product line. Don't put too much stock in PC rag pundits who claim they understand the actions of the enterprise players, if they really knew what they were talking about they'd be working as analysts and advisors on wallstreet and in corporate boardrooms not blathering in PC industry rags written primarily by failed hardware brokers and people who can't pass the MCSE exams.
I work for a Compaq enterprise distributor. Compaq has increased support for and investment in Digital's Alpha product line across the board. The only products that were scuttled were low end x86 products that competed with more successful Compaq PCs. Where the Digital models were more innovative or popular they were rebranded as Compaq products.
Compaq cannot compete in the enterprise against Sun SPARCs, HP PA-RISC, IBM AS400s and RS6000s without Alpha based systems. This is why they have released eight new Alpha system models since they bought Digital and have invested heavily in the new Wildfire architecture.
By the way, Digital was making $14billion a year primarily on its alpha product line before it was bought.
As for cheap x86 compatible chips, I don't see AMD or Cyrix (or Intel for that matter) playing in the enterprise, Sun, IBM, HP and SGI all use Advanced RISC processors.
Just because you use a crummy little x86 CPU doesn't mean everyone should. That would be like Peterbilt getting out of the heavy truck business because more people buy minivans.
If memory serves, for a monopoly to be considered "natural" the optimum size for achieving economies of scale must be greater than the total market for the product. It is (was anyway) more efficient to have one power company supply electricity to a town, city or region and have one set of power lines than to have 3 to 6 competing power grids, therefore each power company is granted a regional monopoly and regulated by a Public Utility Commission.
I see no evidence that this economy of scale is at work in the computer software industry. Microsoft's market power doesn't stem from scale related economies, it comes from historical accident reinforced by predatory business practices.
Microsoft is almost certainly a monopoly but to call it natural is to imply that it is somehow benign and beneficial to consumers.
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That would be totally different then :-)
On the subject of Alphas in retail outlets, it would be darned nice if the availablity of Slot B boards made this feasible. I've met some people who work for retail chains who would like to offer Alphas but don't know how to go about it and are somewhat frightened by the cost of motherboards.
All Alpha NT apps are 32bit. FX!32 is not for 32bit apps its for NT x86 native apps. If your running NT on an Alpha you should be running the Alpha native version, not the intel x86 version, that would be foolish. SQL, Exchange and most of the other important server side apps are available in Alpha native versions.
I don't know where they got that, maybe DEC forgot to submit their benchmarks for consideration. The 1998 Alpha 21164a benchmarks beat the pants off the P2 and even today's P3 550. For that matter some of the SPARC and PA-RISC processors are way faster than intel.
A close relative of mine is making 6 figures as a contract technical recruiter. There are placement services that pay administrative assistants $30k a year or less to filter resumes but they will not serve you well. As L1zard K1n6 says, they play the game and have their choice of geeks, but we also have a choice, don't submit to just one placement agency and don't rely on or recommend those that don't serve your needs. The market is a double edged sword, use it to your advantage.
Those are the exceptions, not the rule. Most suits can't find their way around a computer with both hands, a compass and a sherpas guide.
Redhat isn't putting all of they're stock up for sale just a small portion, so there is no way for microsoft to buy that much even if they were incline to.
Regarding the GPL, Redhat does not choose the license under which Linux is distributed, Linus and the other developers chose that a long time ago. If Redhat wants to distribute any code based on Linux they must use the license Linux comes with - the GPL.
TF2 has far more in common with Starsiege-Tribes than Battlezone, Uprising or Urban Assault. It really belongs in the First Person Shooter category as this is the market it sells to. Don't let the addition of strategic teamplay elements confuse the issue. Q3 will probably have the lock on "deathmatch" style play but TF2 will bring some really cool teamplay to the competition.
Half-Life is not a mod. Half-life's engine uses code licensed from id software and is loosely based on the quake engine. About 60% of that code is all new. Half-life was a standalone game and will not run with nor be proted to the Q3 engine. That being said, Half-life is still an incredible and original game which I would recommend ahead of Q3 for first time buyers.
Umm... no. Team Fortress Classic is TF with minor engine based differences, and its free (as in beer). TF=free mod for quake, TFC=free mod ported to half-life.
Team Fortress 2 is a standalone game based on a greatly modified version of the Half-life engine. It is highly anticipated in the 3Dfps industry and probably the biggest threat to Q3's domination.
Thanks, that should fix some of my Gnome issues. I've been running KDE+Windomaker because of some Gnome wonkiness.
Now I finally can justify converting my Dual P2 from NT to Linux and running Q3test on it. And to think my friends told me to yank one CPU and go with 95.
Those SPEC numbers are very conservative (typical of DEC estimates, they're engineers not marketing). The 500 MHz 21264 in .35u is already in the high 50s for SPECfp.
Compaq has no plans to move the Alpha to the proliant case, the engineering costs and FCC certs are to high when they have well engineered DEC chassis to use. All of the new products are branded "Compaq Alphaserver". There will be some crossovers between the Digital storageworks product and the Compaq classic disk storage. The Compaq Alphaserver ES40 will be the first beneficiary of this with both types of disk shelves available.
The profit margin on Alpha based systems is far greater than anything Compaq ever saw with its intel based products. I don't think they understood what cash cows VMS and Digtal Unix on Alpha were until they saw the numbers after buying the company.
Dgital's poor earnings performance was primarily due to mismanagment and lack of vision not poor alpha sales. Without the Alpha keeping it afloat I have no doubt that Digital would have gone under years ago.
SGI spun off MIPS but they still use the MIPS processor in everything but their low end stuff. Sun doesn't own the SPARC plant but noone doubts their commitment to RISC. HP has always been dependent on Intel for CPU fab so its not suprising that they partnered with intel for their next generation CPU. They never had any intention of going with x86 CISC type CPUs. Most of the system Vendors have gotten out of the silicon business because the costs of remaining competitive are to high. Only companies that specialize in microprocessor fab can affor to invest $1billion everytime they want to upgrade their plant. Outsourcing your silicon fab makes economic sense, dumping your enterprise architecture for commodity consumer CPUs makes no sense at all.
If Merced were here now and faster than the Alpha, then maybe Compaq could justify making the switch, but current generation alphas are faster than Merced will be when it arrives.
As for HP's Merced moves that is a huge blunder.
They were telling their customers that in two years when Merced arrives it would be "just as fast" as the PA-RISC systems they use now. Yeah, throw out your infrastructure and buy a whole new architecture with no significant performance gains and fewr applications, that just didn't fly with the customers and HP eventually caught on.
Don't put too much stock in those benchmarks. They don't actually measure scalability or enterprise readiness.
It is well known that among MCSEs that NT doesn't scale well past 3-4 CPUs. You need the far more expensive NTserver enterprise edition if you want to get up to eight on the Alpha and even then the performance scaling is nothing like linear. From the first tests coming out on the 8-way Penguin Computing systems, the 2.2.x kernel scales reasonably well on eight CPUs. The limiting factor on better scalability appears to be an I/O bottleneck after about six processors are utilized. Those tests were run using a database (Oracle?) to create the load, so perhaps with a less I/O intensive load such as rendering, the scalability would be even better.
Remember, most of Digital's service revenues come from servicing Alpha-based accounts. Compaq paid over $9billion for Digital and has invested hundreds of millions in new R&D for the continuing digital product line. Don't put too much stock in PC rag pundits who claim they understand the actions of the enterprise players, if they really knew what they were talking about they'd be working as analysts and advisors on wallstreet and in corporate boardrooms not blathering in PC industry rags written primarily by failed hardware brokers and people who can't pass the MCSE exams.
I work for a Compaq enterprise distributor. Compaq has increased support for and investment in Digital's Alpha product line across the board. The only products that were scuttled were low end x86 products that competed with more successful Compaq PCs. Where the Digital models were more innovative or popular they were rebranded as Compaq products.
Compaq cannot compete in the enterprise against Sun SPARCs, HP PA-RISC, IBM AS400s and RS6000s without Alpha based systems. This is why they have released eight new Alpha system models since they bought Digital and have invested heavily in the new Wildfire architecture.
By the way, Digital was making $14billion a year primarily on its alpha product line before it was bought.
As for cheap x86 compatible chips, I don't see AMD or Cyrix (or Intel for that matter) playing in the enterprise, Sun, IBM, HP and SGI all use Advanced RISC processors.
Just because you use a crummy little x86 CPU doesn't mean everyone should. That would be like Peterbilt getting out of the heavy truck business because more people buy minivans.
If memory serves, for a monopoly to be considered "natural" the optimum size for achieving economies of scale must be greater than the total market for the product. It is (was anyway) more efficient to have one power company supply electricity to a town, city or region and have one set of power lines than to have 3 to 6 competing power grids, therefore each power company is granted a regional monopoly and regulated by a Public Utility Commission.
I see no evidence that this economy of scale is at work in the computer software industry. Microsoft's market power doesn't stem from scale related economies, it comes from historical accident reinforced by predatory business practices.
Microsoft is almost certainly a monopoly but to call it natural is to imply that it is somehow benign and beneficial to consumers.
Greg