Too late. He peaked a long time ago. The question is how long before people start viewing him like the pitcher that's lost his stuff but can't bring himself to leave the game. Who wants to start the pool? --
I think you're mistaking the implementation of individual TCP/IP components with the standard itself. I usually think of TCP/IP as communcations protocol which provides a standard means of passing information between computers. There are many implementations of this protocol and that seems to bother you.
Now about some of the outrageous statements you made:
``but most people claim BSD IP stack as the standard, and others always speak of the Windows IP stack or how linux is just hacked together (which is the reason many people believe freebsd is better''
I'll bet that a lot of those that say the BSD stack is the standard are old BSD bigots. I've recently heard that the Linux TCP/IP implementation was the one that most closely adhered to the actual standard.
``Atleast Windows as a product line standardized on the Windows IP stack. A win31 app works on a Windows 2000 stack and that what microsoft has kept.''
Well, that's certainly a less-than-widely-touted technical achievement. (He says, his voice dripping with sarcasm.) I wonder why I haven't seen a Bill Gates TV commercial explaining why this compatibility is such an important innovation.
``Sure new features have been added, but again, what is considered a standard.''
Does this mean that MS is moving to de-commoditize TCP/IP now?
``Is TCPIP as a whole standardized? Nope. I can't load BSD stack in linux without horkin the internals of the OS...''
I believe that the answer to the first part if the above quotation is: YES. As to the second part: Methinks you need to actually do a little research into what a standards group actually does and, what a standard even is before making a ludicrous comment like this! Using the same logic, I should be able to say that Multinet for VMS (does that even exist any more?) must be an inferior product since I can't load it on an AS/400 without doing some serious hacking of OS/400. You seem to think that something written for one operating system should run on another without change.
``What does standardized mean? Does it mean a bunch of overly paid fat asses sitting around and deciding our future or does it mean the acceptance by a consumer or product group that is widely used and established and commited? Sounds like the sitting around doesn't do jack, yet the people building a stable product such as the BSD stack or the MSIE browser or the Mozilla Browser or the Posix standards actually get work done.''
FYI: There are a number of Microsoft representatives (``fat asses'' as you call 'em) attending standard bodies meetings as well. Microsoft just seems to do whatever the hell they want to do anyway regardless of what gets decided in those meetings. And, BTW, the Posix standards were arrived at by a whole slew of those so-called ``fat asses'' from industry and IEEE. I used to work with another engineer (years ago) who was on the ANSI FORTRAN working group. He was just a regular guy and wasn't overly paid (and I didn't pay much attention to his backside). When you say ``overly paid fat asses sitting around and deciding our future'' are you referring to people like the denizens of the boardrooms in Redmond, WA?
``So in slashdot world, conformatiy is standardization...''
My dictionary contains the following:
``standard, n. ... 19. conforming in pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, etc., to the usage that is generally considered to be correct or preferred. 20. fulfilling specific requirements as established by an authority, law, rule, custom, etc.....
A STANDARD is an authoritative principle or rule that usually implies a model or pattern for guidance, by comparison with which the quantity, excellence, correctness, etc. of other things may be determined.''
So, yes, ``conformatiy'' (sic) is part of following a standard.
``... and being unique and innovating is illegal and antitrust.''
OK. Now we know who your preferred software vendor is.
(My apologies to Random House for quoting from their dictionary. This seems like `fair use', though.) --
``For example, when IBM wanted a networking protocol, they just said "SNA" and the industry jumped.''
I can remember a presentation given in-house years ago when IBM came to hype their networking technology. When he made the comment:
``...and for those of you that made the mistake of installing Ethernet and are running TCP...''
I couldn't see how he was able to continue amid all the laughter. A lot of people just got up and left. So some of that ``jumping'' was people jumping ship. Not everyone was silly enough to pay a license fee to use the network link to move files, another separate fee to do network printing, etc. etc.
``For example, IBM's CICS (or Rexx, or MQ, or many others) product is a standard, because everyone uses it. The same could be said for Oracle's PL/SQL.''
These aren't standards -- at least you'll have a difficult time convincing me that they are -- they're just popular products. I have to cringe every time some utters the phrase ``[insert-popular-product-name-here] standard''. Just because everyone's using it doesn't make it any less proprietary. IMHO, if it only is available from one company or usable on only a single company's systems, it ain't a standard.(So, go ahead, call me rabidly in favor of true open systems.:-) )
``Java is an arbitrary Sun standard, no matter what noises they make about standards bodies.''
Aren't most standards championed by one company or a small group of companies? Did you think these standards spring fully defined from the brow of Athena or something? Lay off Sun; at least they're trying to promulgate a language that doesn't lead to vendor tie-ins.
The RIAA can probably find any number of studies that support their arguments... while ignoring a similar or greater number of studies that refute them. The fact that their biggest clients -- the major labels -- have been found to be engaging in collusion to artificially boost CD prices and other recent news items about the increase in music sales/profits just goes to show how pointless this entire affair is. If they'd been shown to be actually losing money perhaps the lawsuit would make sense. The problem is that their profits didn't increase the way they always have in the past.
Personally, I don't know who buys a lot of music through the major retail outlets that this group's study polls anyway. Most of my friends either buy via mail order from places like http://cuneiformrecords/, at small privately-owned stores (where the owner really knows the music), or I see bands live at small clubs and buy their CDs at the show. I buy at the large stores only when I see something in the bargain/cutout bin where the prices are closer to earth and even then, only when I'm running an errand at a nearby store or shopping for something else the big store carries. At a recent show, I paid only $12 for the band's latest CD which is far below what I would have paid at a major retailer (assuming that the CD would have even been available there) and is less than what CDs were selling for when they first came out in the early/mid-80s (Remember when they were going to be cheaper than LPs? Ha ha ha!). Plus I got to chat with band members while I was making the purchase. I've got to believe that's a better way support your favorite musicians than having them waiting for the miniscule royalty checks from the big recording companies. Maybe that's only true, though, for the bands that I'd go to see (who don't play the arenas anyway) -- Ricky Martin and Brittany Spears might not be able to survive very long playing small clubs. --
``You can still buy VAX architecture systems from Compaq blah, blah, blah...
er, so? how's that an error in my comment (which was also marked AFAIK)''
It surprises me how most people don't remember that VMS was born on the VAX architecture. Not too different from the folks who think that PCs started with Pentiums. I'll concede that it was more of an oversight or omission than an error.
``a FAT-like file system and drive letters on steroids.. BARF. And I dunno who make's Compaq's hardware, but it bites.''
Methinks you're referring to an older version of VMS. It's had a journaled filesystem (the Spiralog file system) since v7.0 or maybe the later v6.x releases (if memory serves). Don't ask me about it though; we never used at the last VMS site I worked at though I know some people swear by it (while others swear at it). It's not IBM's jfs, DEC's advfs, or whatever Veritas's is called but it's not really FAT-like either or so I understand. Now Files-11 is/was sort of FATty but I've never actually had a corrupted file on a File-11 disk while I've had, and seen countless other people have too, plenty of experience losing files on FAT-based filesystems (via the infamous cross-linked cluster problem). I suspect, though, that most of those losses were due to essentially being root on the PC when using DOS/Windows and its propensity to crashing. If I ran around on VMS systems with BYPASS privilege turned on all the time, I would expect more problems.
As for the drive letters: I never found the drive naming to be a problem. It was tons better than PCs had at the time. I suppose it depends on whet you used first. Personally, I'd find it somewhat annoying to go back to drive letters nowadays. In fact, I currently find it annoying as hell that Linux still uses sequentially assigned drive letters in the SCSI subsystem when other, more transparent, naming conventions exist (especially, since I was using a PC UNIX in the early '90s that didn't have this limitation). One wonders why the kernel developers seem to hate the way System V handles SCSI devices. Oh, well.
Just what are the complaints about Compaq's hardware? I've never heard anyone complain about the VAX and Alpha hardware before other than about the price. Now Compaq's PC hardware? That's another story and I do know of techs who will say it ``bites''.
``our main cluster has three nodes, and it has yet to compensate for a single hardware failure (even some HDD failures have crippled the thing, and they're supposed to be RAID!!)''
Not sure what you're driving at with this comment. What kind of ``cluster'' is this, I wonder. It sounds like you mean hardware fault tolerance. Buy a Tandem or a Stratus. They're hard to beat FT-wise. Of course, you gotta have some pretty deep pockets to consider those hardware platforms.
You can still buy VAX architecture systems from Compaq (cringe -- I still have problems associating Digital's products with Compaq). The top of the line system is slower than most all of the current Alpha line (even the workstations) so I can't imagine who'd buy them nowadays though I suppose some organizations would have their reasons.
2. ``VMS sucks. I can't put my finger on why, but it just does''
You're wrong. My guess is that if you had any real experience with VMS it was on a poorly configured and managed system. I've always considered VMS and UNIX to be more alike than either of their most rabid proponents are willing to admit.
Funny how the state of the art in clustered systems is still a VMScluster (IMNSHO). Most of what the UNIX community calls clusters is really just a failover capability. Now that Tru64 has 99.44% of the functionality of a VMS-based cluster, including a common system disk, er, I mean, root filesystem, it should be assuming that title real soon now. What would float my boat would be if Compaq were to provide the details of how they do their clustering to the world so that Alan Cox could crank out a set of patches to provide Linux with this capability. Should only take him a weekend or so, right? --
``There was a PC370 add on card for MCA bus IBM PS2's. There was an RS370-390 add on card for older RS6000's.'
IBM's always seems to have had things like this. Anyone else remember the 370 emulator for the XT that even let you run a version of the VM/CMS operating system on your desktop. (We were a big CMS shop back in those days and I lobbied to get a couple of these cards but they were much too pricy for us.) --
`` if you want to read some rousing good Hard SF novels, read John Cramer's TWISTER and EINSTEIN'S BRIDGE. Good stories, good characters, good science.''
After being a hard core science fiction reader for years (and years,...) I'd gotten pretty fed up with the genre in recent years. The two novels by Cramer got me back to reading it again. The chapter in Einstein's Bridge where the alternate universe breaks through into the Super Collider tunnel still creeps me out sometimes when I think about it. --
Seriously, I doubt it. Not being a Metallica fan (I don't think I'd recognize a single one of the releases), I could care less if their music is banned from Napster. I just wonder how the heck they think they're going to benefit from this.
The only person who stands to really gain from this is the lawyer (also representing Dr. Dre, another musical has-been). --
I took a class on electronic music back in the late '70s (or was it early '80?). The class used a Moog 2 (if memory serves). Using it was a blast. I had a TEAC 1/4" tape deck that I would record things on then take the tapes to the lab to run through their battery of effects, make loops, run tapes through the Moog filters. Gawd, it was fun. (I still have the tapes I made back then but one of these days the TEAC is gonna up and die on me:-) )
You could do some very interesting things but you had to be willing to get very ``hands-on''. Unlike today, where kids pick up the latest keyboard from Casio and press a button to get the latest stock synthesizer sound. I'd rather that my daughters had the chance to work with a Moog than one of those things. Let 'em twiddle the knobs and create a sound that no one's ever made or heard before. But I'd have to put an addition on the house to have some place to put the beast. I guess a PC with a MIDI port'll have to do until the construction loan goes through. --
I suppose like many others, the poster still find the whole sex change thing it a bit wierd. I was really into electronic music a (ahem) few years ago and remember when the Carlos's Playboy interview came out. The reaction of a bunch of musician friends was ``Who-o-o-o-a! What the???''.
I still find it a bit, oh, I don't know, amusing when I pull out my vinyl copy of ``Switched On Bach'' by Walter and the CD re-issue which is from Wendy. Anyway... I saw an interview with Wendy on TV a few years ago; pretty interesting.
--
``She began to become obsessed with customizing Winamp -- she insisted that her Winamp skin match her desktop theme (which she has mountians of.) She isn't a hacker; she just wants her stuff to look good.''
So I'll bet that skins have eaten all her productive time. Does she get any real work done now? Or is all her spare time spent making the skins look `just right' with her mountains of themes? This is another example of how so-called innovations like themes (on both Windows as well as X) tend to be the most wasteful examples of fritterware that I can think of. Ten years ago we used to get laughed at when we were writing code on out VT-series terminals when the ``advanced'' applications folk were using PCs. In the end, though, we had the last laugh and working applications while they had pretty desktops with little running code.
Remember the old Mac commercial with the two guys in the office spending a week or so customizing their office PC ``so we can be more productive''? The secretary's response along the lines of ``If we're any more productive we'll be out of business'' was right on the money. --
``...19% of Slashdot geeks prefer firewire, while 35% use garden hose.''
My guess is that those 35% of Slashdot poll respondants were voting for `Garden Hose' because SCSI didn't appear on the list.
USB? Firewire? Yah, right! More than bandwidth than I can possibly use for a keyboard and mouse and not enough to make any sense at all for mass storage. Besides, I have worked damned hard to cut down on the proliferation of cables snaking across my desktop. Now Apple and some other folks are telling me I have to put them back. Only if someone comes up with a USB or Firewire hub that installs in an exposed, unused disk bay so that I don't have to have another piece of hardware sitting on the desk.
``recent tests on garden hose to see how its signal performs over long distance''
My performance tests, conducted last summer, indicated that performance was inversely proportional to the number of sprinkler heads you had attached to the bus but that the quality of the hose played some part in this (no hard data was collected on that aspect, though). Plus, adding devices to the bus required shutting down the network as the garden hose bus architecture closely resembles a Thinwire Ethernet. There are some garden hose hubs but they usually only come in two-port models and still require that you shut down an entire leg of the network in order to attach devices.
(Sorry for the screwy formatting. Q:Does any website allow use of the damned <pre>/</pre> tags?)
Also, the lengths can be greatly extended if you use Differential SCSI but I'm not sure how well supported these controllers are under Linux. (I'd be extremely interested to see the KZPSA/KZPBA/HSZ combination supported under Linux!)
Ultra160 is already faster than Fiber Channel although there are some very nifty SAN products that connect via Fiber Channela and allow multiple hosts to share storage arrays (also applicability to Linux is unknown). I've not followed the Ultra160 products very closely but I doubt that they work very well outside the server cabinet (unless you go differential, that is). Whitepapers available on Adaptec's web site are predicting that Ultra320 will be available in 2001. IMHO, for mass storage, Firewire is already dead and getting deader. Maybe some sort of portable backup medium can connect to Firewire but I can't see anyone hanging significant disk space off of it.
``I'm glad I finished high school years ago before the world went completely nuts, but what do I do about my kids??''
Home schooling.
The bizaare stuff that's going on in schools recently on the part of the students as well as the kneejerk reactions of administrators and politicians have the missus and I considering it. --
``Something along the lines of establishing guidelines for future conduct, a blue ribbon panel to monitor MS for some number of years into the future and the threat of additional prosecution if the panel deems that the guidelines have been violated.''
And, of course, this ``blue ribbon'' panel will be comprised of who? Members of the brain trust at the Patent Office? Following the activities of this panel ought to be amusing. Let's see: Take a number of folks in the industry that are pro-MS and a like number that aren't. Stir well. The resulting brew (or is that brewhaha?) will probably turn your stomach. Meanwhile MS haas changed half their file formats and added six more undocumented calls to their APIs.
This mess will be interesting to watch for a good while longer. I suspect that Linux'll be running on 64 processors with minimal SMP penalty, have C2 security, your choice of five journaled filesystems, and a GUI that cooks your breakfast before the MS/DoJ fracas has settled down. --
``If you want to fine them you make it much larger than a couple billion. Then you take the money and pump it into the competitors or perhaps some really nice OSS projects.''
For a nice discussion of what the Fed. Govt. could do in this area see Lawrence Lessig's article in The American Prospect Online. Excellent article. Highly recommended. I found his ideas very interesting and, IMHO, a much better way for the govt. to be attempting to set policy instead of their favorite means (i.e., taxes on what they want to discourage and tax breaks for things they want to encourage -- which usually turns into tax breaks for big campaign contributors).
Lessig's comments about his experience with the FCC `good ol' boys' saddened me, though. (I had to wonder if the movie ``The President's Analyst'' wasn't right on the money after all.) --
``Tripwire: [Description] Tripwire is a system integrity checker, a utility that compares properties of designated files and directories against information stored in a previously generated database. Any changes to these files are flagged and logged, including those that were added or deleted.''
While tripwire is a nice tool (although some people say it's showing its age and there are newer tools now available) what it does is not going to satisfy anything close to C2-level security. Tripwire tells you that someone was messing with your system and by then it's too late (i.e., tripwire tells you that you need to shut the barn door because the theives have stolen your horses).
What our contractor friend is looking for is (I believe) something on the order of access control lists that prevent the touching of the files and directories in the first place. I would think that a kernel module could be written that looks at between user space I/O requests and the filesystem and [dis]allows I/O operations based on the security capabilities granted to the user process. Load the module and your I/O requires properly setup ACLs; unload it and it's back to the garden variety UNIX file permissions (unless you're root, I guess, in case your ACLs are set up incorrectly).
Personally, I would love to see this available on Linux. ACLs and rights identifiers were one of the coolest things (IMHO) under VMS; you could really tailor security far, far better then you could using the simple Read/Write/Execute/Delete access you could set up for objects. Having something like this on Linux (or most Unices, actually) would make it easier to dole out accounts with varying levels of privilege and go a long way toward assuaging those who complain about Unix having a superuser.
...most posters assume that because you're in a telecommuting situation that you must work at home and never get that all-important face time.
My wife was telecommuting and was able to set up meeting as needed when a face-to-face meeting was more effective. She didn't find it isolating to be away from the office and she didn't find herself working 24/7 (picking up the girls from preschool was her daily break from work).
In her case, though, telecommuting did affect her career path within the company. The reason was totally stupid, though: they didn't allow full-time employees to telecommute, only contractors. Their reasoning was that (and as Dave Barry would say: ``I'm not making this up!'') if they allowed one full time employee to telecommute then they might have to let others. I guess that before you know it the managers don't have anyone's shoulders to look over and micromanage. (Justice was sweet, though, in that due to the unenlightened management policies, poor pay, etc., they were losing talent faster than you could say ``seller's market''.)
There are times when I do wind up working from home (like when you're waiting for a contractor to come and work on the plumbing, etc.) and I find that I am able to get twice as much done. It's a great way to get some quiet time when you can crank out documentation which I can take back to the office on tape. My theory is that it's because I don't get asked questions or I'm not hearing other's conversations over the cubicle walls. If it ween't for having to have occasional physical access to hardware (tape drives, etc.) I'd ask to work at home a lot more frequently. --
``Now the question is... Can I get it with a SCSI interface?''
Sure. Although the disks are only purchasable in a single interface (ST506), the scotch tape disk drives turn SCSI after a period of time... just like regular scotch tape. --
This thread has, so far, produced the highest ratio of ``filtered out'' posts after setting my threshold up: nearly 50%. I expect that after a few more hours, this rejection percentage will fall (Gawd, I hope so) as more thoughtful people begin posting. Apparently, it's easier to dash off a flaming post about Jon Katz than it is to take some time and think about what he's trying to say. If only there were a way to limit the ability to post to people who've actually read the article. --
``Most teacher unions are extremely strong, and extremely exclusionary. (E.g., you have a master's degree and 20 years experience and you want to help out? Sorry, but the school system (and teacher's union) assert you are unqualified to teach the subject matter - but the 21-year-old who just got her education BS *is* qualified to teach the material.''
True story: I have a close friend who graduated with a degree in English and was one Biology course away from having a double major. Enters the public school system teaching, not Biology -- he didn't have ``seniority'' -- but ``Sports and Auto Literature''. I had never seen him more depressed than he was that year. He was fortunate that the school system lacked the funding to hire him back the following year. (He's in IT now.)
``A few states are experimenting with "fast track" certification of domain experts, but they're the exception.) ''
...And here in Illinois, these ``fast-track'' certification programs come under fire from, you guessed it, the teacher's unions. The main complaint is that these fast-track upstarts lack the background in teaching methodologies to be good teachers. On the other hand, the teacher's unions have no problem, whatsoever, with placing someone in a Math classroom with four years of education in a subject totally unrelated to the subject they're asked to teach. The fast-track programs are attracting bright, energetic people to teaching. I thinks that's the problem that the unions have with these certification programs. They're bringing in people who see the student's interests and education as job one and the union's interests way down on their list of priorities. --
``Secondly, she seemed to think that the only purpose of software was to Solve Important Mathematical Questions Over and Over Again (tm). Although Algebra II was not required to be in that class, most of the problems involved such things as finding roots of polynomials. No actual algorithms, just trivial little tasks with no concept of what they were learning.
My wife just had a very similar experience. She was taking an introductory course in C at the local junior college and the instructor went way overboard. People who are trying to learn a new language and are not computer scientists or mathematicians (the Instructor was working toward his Ph.D. in Math.) really don't need to be assigned to write Fibonacci Number generators or solve the Towers of Hanoi puzzle. There was virtually no coverage of I/O, structs (unions, etc.), or debugging. There was only one assignment that required writing a program that dealt with external data files; hardly a ``real world'' situation. I guess all these topics were covered in the only prerequisite course: Introduction to BASIC. Nearly half the class dropped out of the C course. --
Slashdot Mirror
Too late. He peaked a long time ago. The question is how long before people start viewing him like the pitcher that's lost his stuff but can't bring himself to leave the game. Who wants to start the pool?
--
I think you're mistaking the implementation of individual TCP/IP components with the standard itself. I usually think of TCP/IP as communcations protocol which provides a standard means of passing information between computers. There are many implementations of this protocol and that seems to bother you.
Now about some of the outrageous statements you made:
I'll bet that a lot of those that say the BSD stack is the standard are old BSD bigots. I've recently heard that the Linux TCP/IP implementation was the one that most closely adhered to the actual standard.
Well, that's certainly a less-than-widely-touted technical achievement. (He says, his voice dripping with sarcasm.) I wonder why I haven't seen a Bill Gates TV commercial explaining why this compatibility is such an important innovation.
Does this mean that MS is moving to de-commoditize TCP/IP now?
I believe that the answer to the first part if the above quotation is: YES. As to the second part: Methinks you need to actually do a little research into what a standards group actually does and, what a standard even is before making a ludicrous comment like this! Using the same logic, I should be able to say that Multinet for VMS (does that even exist any more?) must be an inferior product since I can't load it on an AS/400 without doing some serious hacking of OS/400. You seem to think that something written for one operating system should run on another without change.
FYI: There are a number of Microsoft representatives (``fat asses'' as you call 'em) attending standard bodies meetings as well. Microsoft just seems to do whatever the hell they want to do anyway regardless of what gets decided in those meetings. And, BTW, the Posix standards were arrived at by a whole slew of those so-called ``fat asses'' from industry and IEEE. I used to work with another engineer (years ago) who was on the ANSI FORTRAN working group. He was just a regular guy and wasn't overly paid (and I didn't pay much attention to his backside). When you say ``overly paid fat asses sitting around and deciding our future'' are you referring to people like the denizens of the boardrooms in Redmond, WA?
My dictionary contains the following:
So, yes, ``conformatiy'' (sic) is part of following a standard.
OK. Now we know who your preferred software vendor is.
(My apologies to Random House for quoting from their dictionary. This seems like `fair use', though.)
--
I can remember a presentation given in-house years ago when IBM came to hype their networking technology. When he made the comment:
I couldn't see how he was able to continue amid all the laughter. A lot of people just got up and left. So some of that ``jumping'' was people jumping ship. Not everyone was silly enough to pay a license fee to use the network link to move files, another separate fee to do network printing, etc. etc.
These aren't standards -- at least you'll have a difficult time convincing me that they are -- they're just popular products. I have to cringe every time some utters the phrase ``[insert-popular-product-name-here] standard''. Just because everyone's using it doesn't make it any less proprietary. IMHO, if it only is available from one company or usable on only a single company's systems, it ain't a standard.(So, go ahead, call me rabidly in favor of true open systems. :-) )
--
The RIAA can probably find any number of studies that support their arguments... while ignoring a similar or greater number of studies that refute them. The fact that their biggest clients -- the major labels -- have been found to be engaging in collusion to artificially boost CD prices and other recent news items about the increase in music sales/profits just goes to show how pointless this entire affair is. If they'd been shown to be actually losing money perhaps the lawsuit would make sense. The problem is that their profits didn't increase the way they always have in the past.
Personally, I don't know who buys a lot of music through the major retail outlets that this group's study polls anyway. Most of my friends either buy via mail order from places like http://cuneiformrecords/ , at small privately-owned stores (where the owner really knows the music), or I see bands live at small clubs and buy their CDs at the show. I buy at the large stores only when I see something in the bargain/cutout bin where the prices are closer to earth and even then, only when I'm running an errand at a nearby store or shopping for something else the big store carries. At a recent show, I paid only $12 for the band's latest CD which is far below what I would have paid at a major retailer (assuming that the CD would have even been available there) and is less than what CDs were selling for when they first came out in the early/mid-80s (Remember when they were going to be cheaper than LPs? Ha ha ha!). Plus I got to chat with band members while I was making the purchase. I've got to believe that's a better way support your favorite musicians than having them waiting for the miniscule royalty checks from the big recording companies. Maybe that's only true, though, for the bands that I'd go to see (who don't play the arenas anyway) -- Ricky Martin and Brittany Spears might not be able to survive very long playing small clubs.
--
Heh, just call me picky today... :-)
It surprises me how most people don't remember that VMS was born on the VAX architecture. Not too different from the folks who think that PCs started with Pentiums. I'll concede that it was more of an oversight or omission than an error.
Methinks you're referring to an older version of VMS. It's had a journaled filesystem (the Spiralog file system) since v7.0 or maybe the later v6.x releases (if memory serves). Don't ask me about it though; we never used at the last VMS site I worked at though I know some people swear by it (while others swear at it). It's not IBM's jfs, DEC's advfs, or whatever Veritas's is called but it's not really FAT-like either or so I understand. Now Files-11 is/was sort of FATty but I've never actually had a corrupted file on a File-11 disk while I've had, and seen countless other people have too, plenty of experience losing files on FAT-based filesystems (via the infamous cross-linked cluster problem). I suspect, though, that most of those losses were due to essentially being root on the PC when using DOS/Windows and its propensity to crashing. If I ran around on VMS systems with BYPASS privilege turned on all the time, I would expect more problems.
As for the drive letters: I never found the drive naming to be a problem. It was tons better than PCs had at the time. I suppose it depends on whet you used first. Personally, I'd find it somewhat annoying to go back to drive letters nowadays. In fact, I currently find it annoying as hell that Linux still uses sequentially assigned drive letters in the SCSI subsystem when other, more transparent, naming conventions exist (especially, since I was using a PC UNIX in the early '90s that didn't have this limitation). One wonders why the kernel developers seem to hate the way System V handles SCSI devices. Oh, well.
Just what are the complaints about Compaq's hardware? I've never heard anyone complain about the VAX and Alpha hardware before other than about the price. Now Compaq's PC hardware? That's another story and I do know of techs who will say it ``bites''.
Not sure what you're driving at with this comment. What kind of ``cluster'' is this, I wonder. It sounds like you mean hardware fault tolerance. Buy a Tandem or a Stratus. They're hard to beat FT-wise. Of course, you gotta have some pretty deep pockets to consider those hardware platforms.
rtscts? Gee, I'm still getting by with xonxoff.
--
Two errors in your post:
1. ``VMS is by Digital for Alphas''
You can still buy VAX architecture systems from Compaq (cringe -- I still have problems associating Digital's products with Compaq). The top of the line system is slower than most all of the current Alpha line (even the workstations) so I can't imagine who'd buy them nowadays though I suppose some organizations would have their reasons.
2. ``VMS sucks. I can't put my finger on why, but it just does''
You're wrong. My guess is that if you had any real experience with VMS it was on a poorly configured and managed system. I've always considered VMS and UNIX to be more alike than either of their most rabid proponents are willing to admit.
Funny how the state of the art in clustered systems is still a VMScluster (IMNSHO). Most of what the UNIX community calls clusters is really just a failover capability. Now that Tru64 has 99.44% of the functionality of a VMS-based cluster, including a common system disk, er, I mean, root filesystem, it should be assuming that title real soon now. What would float my boat would be if Compaq were to provide the details of how they do their clustering to the world so that Alan Cox could crank out a set of patches to provide Linux with this capability. Should only take him a weekend or so, right?
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IBM's always seems to have had things like this. Anyone else remember the 370 emulator for the XT that even let you run a version of the VM/CMS operating system on your desktop. (We were a big CMS shop back in those days and I lobbied to get a couple of these cards but they were much too pricy for us.)
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After being a hard core science fiction reader for years (and years, ...) I'd gotten pretty fed up with the genre in recent years. The two novels by Cramer got me back to reading it again. The chapter in Einstein's Bridge where the alternate universe breaks through into the Super Collider tunnel still creeps me out sometimes when I think about it.
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Nah. The above only works for a kernel upgrade (how else could you be using cat?).
And two other points:
dd of=/dev/hda
to modify their boot sectors.
Geez. These commercial Linux distibutions are making it just too darned easy.
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... if they can afford to alienate 335,435 fans.
Seriously, I doubt it. Not being a Metallica fan (I don't think I'd recognize a single one of the releases), I could care less if their music is banned from Napster. I just wonder how the heck they think they're going to benefit from this.
The only person who stands to really gain from this is the lawyer (also representing Dr. Dre, another musical has-been).
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I took a class on electronic music back in the late '70s (or was it early '80?). The class used a Moog 2 (if memory serves). Using it was a blast. I had a TEAC 1/4" tape deck that I would record things on then take the tapes to the lab to run through their battery of effects, make loops, run tapes through the Moog filters. Gawd, it was fun. (I still have the tapes I made back then but one of these days the TEAC is gonna up and die on me :-) )
You could do some very interesting things but you had to be willing to get very ``hands-on''. Unlike today, where kids pick up the latest keyboard from Casio and press a button to get the latest stock synthesizer sound. I'd rather that my daughters had the chance to work with a Moog than one of those things. Let 'em twiddle the knobs and create a sound that no one's ever made or heard before. But I'd have to put an addition on the house to have some place to put the beast. I guess a PC with a MIDI port'll have to do until the construction loan goes through.
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I suppose like many others, the poster still find the whole sex change thing it a bit wierd. I was really into electronic music a (ahem) few years ago and remember when the Carlos's Playboy interview came out. The reaction of a bunch of musician friends was ``Who-o-o-o-a! What the???''.
I still find it a bit, oh, I don't know, amusing when I pull out my vinyl copy of ``Switched On Bach'' by Walter and the CD re-issue which is from Wendy. Anyway... I saw an interview with Wendy on TV a few years ago; pretty interesting.
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So I'll bet that skins have eaten all her productive time. Does she get any real work done now? Or is all her spare time spent making the skins look `just right' with her mountains of themes? This is another example of how so-called innovations like themes (on both Windows as well as X) tend to be the most wasteful examples of fritterware that I can think of. Ten years ago we used to get laughed at when we were writing code on out VT-series terminals when the ``advanced'' applications folk were using PCs. In the end, though, we had the last laugh and working applications while they had pretty desktops with little running code.
Remember the old Mac commercial with the two guys in the office spending a week or so customizing their office PC ``so we can be more productive''? The secretary's response along the lines of ``If we're any more productive we'll be out of business'' was right on the money.
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My guess is that those 35% of Slashdot poll respondants were voting for `Garden Hose' because SCSI didn't appear on the list.
USB? Firewire? Yah, right! More than bandwidth than I can possibly use for a keyboard and mouse and not enough to make any sense at all for mass storage. Besides, I have worked damned hard to cut down on the proliferation of cables snaking across my desktop. Now Apple and some other folks are telling me I have to put them back. Only if someone comes up with a USB or Firewire hub that installs in an exposed, unused disk bay so that I don't have to have another piece of hardware sitting on the desk.
My performance tests, conducted last summer, indicated that performance was inversely proportional to the number of sprinkler heads you had attached to the bus but that the quality of the hose played some part in this (no hard data was collected on that aspect, though). Plus, adding devices to the bus required shutting down the network as the garden hose bus architecture closely resembles a Thinwire Ethernet. There are some garden hose hubs but they usually only come in two-port models and still require that you shut down an entire leg of the network in order to attach devices.
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Home schooling.
The bizaare stuff that's going on in schools recently on the part of the students as well as the kneejerk reactions of administrators and politicians have the missus and I considering it.
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And, of course, this ``blue ribbon'' panel will be comprised of who? Members of the brain trust at the Patent Office? Following the activities of this panel ought to be amusing. Let's see: Take a number of folks in the industry that are pro-MS and a like number that aren't. Stir well. The resulting brew (or is that brewhaha?) will probably turn your stomach. Meanwhile MS haas changed half their file formats and added six more undocumented calls to their APIs.
This mess will be interesting to watch for a good while longer. I suspect that Linux'll be running on 64 processors with minimal SMP penalty, have C2 security, your choice of five journaled filesystems, and a GUI that cooks your breakfast before the MS/DoJ fracas has settled down.
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Well, I have. Mrs. Malaprop was my favorite character.
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For a nice discussion of what the Fed. Govt. could do in this area see Lawrence Lessig's article in The American Prospect Online . Excellent article. Highly recommended. I found his ideas very interesting and, IMHO, a much better way for the govt. to be attempting to set policy instead of their favorite means (i.e., taxes on what they want to discourage and tax breaks for things they want to encourage -- which usually turns into tax breaks for big campaign contributors).
Lessig's comments about his experience with the FCC `good ol' boys' saddened me, though. (I had to wonder if the movie ``The President's Analyst'' wasn't right on the money after all.)
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While tripwire is a nice tool (although some people say it's showing its age and there are newer tools now available) what it does is not going to satisfy anything close to C2-level security. Tripwire tells you that someone was messing with your system and by then it's too late (i.e., tripwire tells you that you need to shut the barn door because the theives have stolen your horses).
What our contractor friend is looking for is (I believe) something on the order of access control lists that prevent the touching of the files and directories in the first place. I would think that a kernel module could be written that looks at between user space I/O requests and the filesystem and [dis]allows I/O operations based on the security capabilities granted to the user process. Load the module and your I/O requires properly setup ACLs; unload it and it's back to the garden variety UNIX file permissions (unless you're root, I guess, in case your ACLs are set up incorrectly).
Personally, I would love to see this available on Linux. ACLs and rights identifiers were one of the coolest things (IMHO) under VMS; you could really tailor security far, far better then you could using the simple Read/Write/Execute/Delete access you could set up for objects. Having something like this on Linux (or most Unices, actually) would make it easier to dole out accounts with varying levels of privilege and go a long way toward assuaging those who complain about Unix having a superuser.
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My wife was telecommuting and was able to set up meeting as needed when a face-to-face meeting was more effective. She didn't find it isolating to be away from the office and she didn't find herself working 24/7 (picking up the girls from preschool was her daily break from work).
In her case, though, telecommuting did affect her career path within the company. The reason was totally stupid, though: they didn't allow full-time employees to telecommute, only contractors. Their reasoning was that (and as Dave Barry would say: ``I'm not making this up!'') if they allowed one full time employee to telecommute then they might have to let others. I guess that before you know it the managers don't have anyone's shoulders to look over and micromanage. (Justice was sweet, though, in that due to the unenlightened management policies, poor pay, etc., they were losing talent faster than you could say ``seller's market''.)
There are times when I do wind up working from home (like when you're waiting for a contractor to come and work on the plumbing, etc.) and I find that I am able to get twice as much done. It's a great way to get some quiet time when you can crank out documentation which I can take back to the office on tape. My theory is that it's because I don't get asked questions or I'm not hearing other's conversations over the cubicle walls. If it ween't for having to have occasional physical access to hardware (tape drives, etc.) I'd ask to work at home a lot more frequently.
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Sure. Although the disks are only purchasable in a single interface (ST506), the scotch tape disk drives turn SCSI after a period of time... just like regular scotch tape.
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This thread has, so far, produced the highest ratio of ``filtered out'' posts after setting my threshold up: nearly 50%. I expect that after a few more hours, this rejection percentage will fall (Gawd, I hope so) as more thoughtful people begin posting. Apparently, it's easier to dash off a flaming post about Jon Katz than it is to take some time and think about what he's trying to say. If only there were a way to limit the ability to post to people who've actually read the article.
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True story: I have a close friend who graduated with a degree in English and was one Biology course away from having a double major. Enters the public school system teaching, not Biology -- he didn't have ``seniority'' -- but ``Sports and Auto Literature''. I had never seen him more depressed than he was that year. He was fortunate that the school system lacked the funding to hire him back the following year. (He's in IT now.)
...And here in Illinois, these ``fast-track'' certification programs come under fire from, you guessed it, the teacher's unions. The main complaint is that these fast-track upstarts lack the background in teaching methodologies to be good teachers. On the other hand, the teacher's unions have no problem, whatsoever, with placing someone in a Math classroom with four years of education in a subject totally unrelated to the subject they're asked to teach. The fast-track programs are attracting bright, energetic people to teaching. I thinks that's the problem that the unions have with these certification programs. They're bringing in people who see the student's interests and education as job one and the union's interests way down on their list of priorities.
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My wife just had a very similar experience. She was taking an introductory course in C at the local junior college and the instructor went way overboard. People who are trying to learn a new language and are not computer scientists or mathematicians (the Instructor was working toward his Ph.D. in Math.) really don't need to be assigned to write Fibonacci Number generators or solve the Towers of Hanoi puzzle. There was virtually no coverage of I/O, structs (unions, etc.), or debugging. There was only one assignment that required writing a program that dealt with external data files; hardly a ``real world'' situation. I guess all these topics were covered in the only prerequisite course: Introduction to BASIC. Nearly half the class dropped out of the C course.
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