Not many years ago, Sun was paying about $2k for 1995-era HP 700-series workstations. We cleaned out a storage closet and saved a good chunk on new gear.
IBM has been doing this for a long time--so has everyone else. "Competitive Upgrades" have been around in the Unix landscape for over a decade. We used to get sheets from Sun showing us what hardware would give us discounts towards new purchases.
Ignoring how very cool the Niagara chips are, I still disagree. "but most times I'm better off looking at RH and a Dell."
Dell, maybe. Sun's AMD/Intel hardware is still nicer, but may cost more--depending on who you are and how much you buy.
But RedHat? No. Unless you have an application that doesn't run elsewhere, Linux still isn't a great server OS, and isn't a patch on Solaris.
Solaris/X86 is almost universally a better solution--AND, code written on Solaris/SPARC can be recompiled without any porting. I can't imagine pushing vendors _away_ from Solaris.
So I went to a school filled with poor or bad teachers. The good teachers were generally an embarassment to the school board in one way or another (i.e. a gay teacher a quarter-century ago was borderline unacceptable).
Where did I go? One of the two most prestigious academic high schools in our city of 3/4 million people. You needed high marks to get in, and high marks to stay in. Music and drama were on the agenda, phys ed wasn't (at least, not beyond the one course required for grad). Thing is, the students did well. The students did well _despite_ the teachers, because they were driven.
I think you've got Schwartz exactly backwards. He's pretending to be a cool open-source tech/hippie sort, but in fact is another two-faced incompetent middle-manager who should be left to shuffle paperwork (or alternatively, pick bottles in the alleys).
That pony tail is a desperate attempt to fit in with the tech staff of Sun's customers. It never worked.
Let's take the anti-capitalist hippie and the gun-loving greaseball, lock 'em in a room with five sticks, and see who comes out in the end.
And just to be sure of things, we'll use really good locks on the door.
I'll be happy to consider any other way of getting these idiots out of the way, but the time for zealotry is over--it's time for the various subfactions of the cult of Linux/Gnu/OSS/FOSS to grow up and put their efforts towards mature products, instead of arguing over details that scare potential users away.
There was a time when alpha meant "feature-complete, but broken." Beta meant "OK, let's get the last few bugs out before release."
Later, as code got more complex, beta usually went through a few phases. That was fine. Also, the beta testers were generally professionals, with some exceptions. (it's always a good plan to get real users who can break the unbreakable. Just make sure you don't count on them exclusively.)
Nowadays, what companies put through 'beta testing' is rarely alpha-code. Feature complete? Maybe, maybe not. Realistically, the second release candidate onwards through the first post-release patch should properly be considered beta, because the number of products that are even usable until after the first patch are minimal.
Ultimately, quality code doesn't pay in almost all commercial cases. Get enough untrained end-users to find the worst of the show-stopper bugs, and then release the code and start making money. Once in a long while, your product will be so bad that it falls on its face--but that's the exception, and will probably still cost less than professionally beta-testing all of your products to a high level of quality.
Re:Split the company
on
Oracle Buys Sun
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Mostly I agree with you. However...
Workstations are necessary as a platform for developers/admins. Even as a loss-leader, they support the health of server sales. Be that as it may, Sun workstations are all PCs now anyways. No more SPARC on the desktop.
The super high-end servers are a big profit area, even at a low volume. The same computer power sells for a MUCH higher margin, even after the higher costs are factored in. Also, they (again!) support the low-mid range sales. If you have a monster Sun system in your data centre, the most obvious gear to support it is more Sun gear.
Solaris is open. If you don't like the CDDL license, too bad for you. The fact that it doesn't meet the requirements of an aging anti-commerce hippie doesn't make it less open. Hearing "change the license" is automatically a flag that some Linux fanboy is determined to paint the world in HIS colour, and EVERYONE ELSE must comply.
Stop right there. Fanboys are cute, and on a good day I'd be tempted to pat you on the head and say, "that's nice, now run along and play. Grown ups are talking."
Today isn't a good day. Therefore...
Congratulations. You apparently missed the entire point of (a) what I said, and (b) the article itself. You have shown strong evidence of an inability to understand and think critically, suggesting that Mac users really _are_ a cult.
It's not about how MacOS behaves. It's not about how Linux behaves (or god forbid, Ubuntu "Vomiting Vole" version 63.1.2.7b patch 14) or Solaris, or FreeBSD or AIX or VMS.
Read the headline: "Why IT won't power down the PCs." Read the summary: "...top reasons preventing organizations from practicing proper PC power management" Read my post: "Looking at what runs on the desktops of nearly every company with an IT department (and yes, your company may be different--GOOD for you!), we're faced with Windows."
The fact that works better than Windows is TOTALLY IRRELEVANT to the issue! I thought the comment about "your company may be different..." would be clear enough for most people, but apparently not you.
Again, congratulations on missing the blindingly obvious. Our company could hire you--you'd fit in well.
Looking at what runs on the desktops of nearly every company with an IT department (and yes, your company may be different--GOOD for you!), we're faced with Windows. And at the end of the day, Windows does power management very poorly. If it worked _exactly_ as advertised, then it would be an ugly and painful kludge of overlapping terms and areas of control. Is suspending a computer more like "standby" or "hibernate?" What if I choose standby in 5 minutes, but turn off hard drives in 15 minutes? Who wins? Also, is my computer idle if I have an application running on it for hours (or days) on end? Does Firefox get treated the same as a gcc job?
However, that's in an ideal fantasy world. In reality, it's much worse. Some computers work, some don't. Some work one day, but fail after a MS patch. Some let you choose hibernate but won't do it, some will go to sleep and never wake up again. Now before anyone jumps in with 'oddball hardware' and such, let me point out these two points:
1) I see this behaviour with XP SP3 on an off-the-shelf Dell laptop certified for (and shipped with) XP. I see it on HP desktops under the same conditions. It's not just fringe cases, it's the definition of mainstream business computers! 2) It doesn't MATTER what hardware I have! If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Microsoft hasn't been able to get this working well since 1995 (or earlier--did Win3.1 have power management stuff in it?). Even if Vista or Windows 7 get it right, it won't matter at this point because nobody is willing to bother with power management anymore. The pain has been too great for too long for us to let it into our psyche, and it's not likely to suddenly happen now.
It's always the same story. "Technology X is no longer able to stop spammers/bots. Technology Y will solve everything though."
As long as it's an arms race of technology, it will be...an arms race. Better tech means more effort on the part of the spammers to break it. The rewards for the spammer stay constant, but the costs for the defender constantly increase.
There are only two ways to stop spam: Make it financially unsustainable, or murder everyone on this list, and repeat every six months. Note that I'm NOT advocating this behaviour, but unless you can change the price model of spam, it's the only solution.
Recently I went looking for some 3rd edition books, since I thought they'd be getting scarce soon.
Scarce? I was mistaken. 3.0 and 3.5 are GONE. Every local gaming store, every local used book store, every online store in Canada, and everywhere else I checked were out of old editions.
Especially curious was the fact that one of the gaming stores had about 15 full sets of 3.5 at Christmas, but by the second week of January, didn't have a single copy of any sourcebook from that era. Nada.
Does anyone know if WotC has done a big buyback? It almost seems like someone has been scouring the bookstores methodically, snatching up everything that would suggest an older edition ever existed.
Ah well, screw 'em. I'll play what I want, and if I can't buy the material, I _will_ download it. Way to go, Wizards!
I agree with pretty much everything you've said here. The "code it yourself!" mentality and documentation issues get under my skin. However, there is one other issue which scares people away:
Licensing.
Yeah, it's free. It's open-source. If, as a linux neophyte, you jump onto a forum for help, you're bound to run into someone fighting over licenses (GPL3 vs. GPL2, can we use CDDL software, BSD, Apache, etc.). It just shouldn't be an issue for end users, but so many times it seems like it gets forced onto them. The easy solution is to walk away and go back to Windows.
Lack of apps, as you pointed out, is the other part. My wife teaches AutoCAD. Guess how useful Linux is to her?
HP? They're not alive because of people using HP-UX, they're alive because HP-UX is a trivial part of their business. They make laptops and printers, and that (especially the printers) is why they're alive.
Generally correct, although a few things that I would argue.
#1: IBM and HP are both companies that do something other than Unix. SGI quit selling MIPS gear and had announced the end of the road for Irix a while back. That means that Sun is the only pure Unix company left standing--and the idiotic BoD is trying to get bought by anyone willing to fatten their wallets.
Interestingly, Apple's OS X and Sun's (Open)Solaris are the only Unixes that are (a) available on commodity hardware, and (b) actively being developed. They're the only commercial competition to Linux, and Sun is the only one trying to compete on the "new model" of FOSS software and paid services.
But MIPS is dead. Alpha is dead, PA-RISC is dead, and in five years, I suspect SPARC will be dead. IRIX is dead, OSF/1 is dead, HP-UX is dying, AIX is dying, and Solaris 10 is looking shaky.
The problem I have with all of this is that for the 'outdatedness' of these old systems, Linux still behaves like a hack-job. Documentation is spotty, software development stability is questionable, and it's very clear that different parts of it were written by different people with no coherency between them.
If the old systems were disappearing because of something better coming along, I'd be happier. Unfortunately, it's not necessarily better--just faster to change.
Everything you say is true--and none of it changes my claims.
What you need to do is sell me something that I can take home and use!
The moment that the market bought into the 'licensing software' bullshit was the moment that the software makers were given carte blanche on stupid crap like this. They should be beaten senseless and powerless.
Yo, everyone! Microsoft, Stardock, Adobe, Sony, and all the rest of you. I've got an idea on how you can make money here. Listen carefully, because this is very tricky.
What you need to do is sell me something that I can take home and use! Sell me a program, let me install it and use it. Sell me a CD, let me put it in the car and listen to it.
In short, QUIT SCREWING AROUND WITH DRM! It does NOTHING but make me less inclined to pay for your damned products! Even moreso if I need an internet connection to authorize stand-alone store-purchased software.
Oh, and a SPECIAL note for Adobe: Quit telling me every time I start a program that I REALLY REALLY should register for your online photoshop service which isn't available in my country!
Slashdot Mirror
Yep. They will--if you buy enough new IBM crap.
Not many years ago, Sun was paying about $2k for 1995-era HP 700-series workstations. We cleaned out a storage closet and saved a good chunk on new gear.
IBM has been doing this for a long time--so has everyone else. "Competitive Upgrades" have been around in the Unix landscape for over a decade. We used to get sheets from Sun showing us what hardware would give us discounts towards new purchases.
Ignoring how very cool the Niagara chips are, I still disagree.
"but most times I'm better off looking at RH and a Dell."
Dell, maybe. Sun's AMD/Intel hardware is still nicer, but may cost more--depending on who you are and how much you buy.
But RedHat? No. Unless you have an application that doesn't run elsewhere, Linux still isn't a great server OS, and isn't a patch on Solaris.
Solaris/X86 is almost universally a better solution--AND, code written on Solaris/SPARC can be recompiled without any porting. I can't imagine pushing vendors _away_ from Solaris.
So I went to a school filled with poor or bad teachers. The good teachers were generally an embarassment to the school board in one way or another (i.e. a gay teacher a quarter-century ago was borderline unacceptable).
Where did I go? One of the two most prestigious academic high schools in our city of 3/4 million people. You needed high marks to get in, and high marks to stay in. Music and drama were on the agenda, phys ed wasn't (at least, not beyond the one course required for grad). Thing is, the students did well. The students did well _despite_ the teachers, because they were driven.
I think you've got Schwartz exactly backwards. He's pretending to be a cool open-source tech/hippie sort, but in fact is another two-faced incompetent middle-manager who should be left to shuffle paperwork (or alternatively, pick bottles in the alleys).
That pony tail is a desperate attempt to fit in with the tech staff of Sun's customers. It never worked.
Maybe, maybe not. It depends on your contract, and the rules around using the company's "blog space." (wow, that's a terrible expression!)
Sun has encouraged employees to speak their mind on blogs.sun.com. This is the sort of thing that should be (and was) tolerated.
*sigh*
At least pick an addictive drug next time.
Here's an idea.
Let's take the anti-capitalist hippie and the gun-loving greaseball, lock 'em in a room with five sticks, and see who comes out in the end.
And just to be sure of things, we'll use really good locks on the door.
I'll be happy to consider any other way of getting these idiots out of the way, but the time for zealotry is over--it's time for the various subfactions of the cult of Linux/Gnu/OSS/FOSS to grow up and put their efforts towards mature products, instead of arguing over details that scare potential users away.
"...employees using sites on official Telstra business..."
End of article. No story here. Please keep your scandal and outrage prepared for the next false alarm.
There was a time when alpha meant "feature-complete, but broken." Beta meant "OK, let's get the last few bugs out before release."
Later, as code got more complex, beta usually went through a few phases. That was fine. Also, the beta testers were generally professionals, with some exceptions. (it's always a good plan to get real users who can break the unbreakable. Just make sure you don't count on them exclusively.)
Nowadays, what companies put through 'beta testing' is rarely alpha-code. Feature complete? Maybe, maybe not. Realistically, the second release candidate onwards through the first post-release patch should properly be considered beta, because the number of products that are even usable until after the first patch are minimal.
Ultimately, quality code doesn't pay in almost all commercial cases. Get enough untrained end-users to find the worst of the show-stopper bugs, and then release the code and start making money. Once in a long while, your product will be so bad that it falls on its face--but that's the exception, and will probably still cost less than professionally beta-testing all of your products to a high level of quality.
Mostly I agree with you. However...
Workstations are necessary as a platform for developers/admins. Even as a loss-leader, they support the health of server sales. Be that as it may, Sun workstations are all PCs now anyways. No more SPARC on the desktop.
The super high-end servers are a big profit area, even at a low volume. The same computer power sells for a MUCH higher margin, even after the higher costs are factored in. Also, they (again!) support the low-mid range sales. If you have a monster Sun system in your data centre, the most obvious gear to support it is more Sun gear.
Solaris is open. If you don't like the CDDL license, too bad for you. The fact that it doesn't meet the requirements of an aging anti-commerce hippie doesn't make it less open. Hearing "change the license" is automatically a flag that some Linux fanboy is determined to paint the world in HIS colour, and EVERYONE ELSE must comply.
"Have you tried a Mac lately?"
Stop right there. Fanboys are cute, and on a good day I'd be tempted to pat you on the head and say, "that's nice, now run along and play. Grown ups are talking."
Today isn't a good day. Therefore...
Congratulations. You apparently missed the entire point of (a) what I said, and (b) the article itself. You have shown strong evidence of an inability to understand and think critically, suggesting that Mac users really _are_ a cult.
It's not about how MacOS behaves. It's not about how Linux behaves (or god forbid, Ubuntu "Vomiting Vole" version 63.1.2.7b patch 14) or Solaris, or FreeBSD or AIX or VMS.
Read the headline: "Why IT won't power down the PCs."
Read the summary: "...top reasons preventing organizations from practicing proper PC power management"
Read my post: "Looking at what runs on the desktops of nearly every company with an IT department (and yes, your company may be different--GOOD for you!), we're faced with Windows."
The fact that works better than Windows is TOTALLY IRRELEVANT to the issue! I thought the comment about "your company may be different..." would be clear enough for most people, but apparently not you.
Again, congratulations on missing the blindingly obvious. Our company could hire you--you'd fit in well.
Bollocks.
Really, it's utter bullshit.
Looking at what runs on the desktops of nearly every company with an IT department (and yes, your company may be different--GOOD for you!), we're faced with Windows. And at the end of the day, Windows does power management very poorly. If it worked _exactly_ as advertised, then it would be an ugly and painful kludge of overlapping terms and areas of control. Is suspending a computer more like "standby" or "hibernate?" What if I choose standby in 5 minutes, but turn off hard drives in 15 minutes? Who wins? Also, is my computer idle if I have an application running on it for hours (or days) on end? Does Firefox get treated the same as a gcc job?
However, that's in an ideal fantasy world. In reality, it's much worse. Some computers work, some don't. Some work one day, but fail after a MS patch. Some let you choose hibernate but won't do it, some will go to sleep and never wake up again. Now before anyone jumps in with 'oddball hardware' and such, let me point out these two points:
1) I see this behaviour with XP SP3 on an off-the-shelf Dell laptop certified for (and shipped with) XP. I see it on HP desktops under the same conditions. It's not just fringe cases, it's the definition of mainstream business computers!
2) It doesn't MATTER what hardware I have! If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Microsoft hasn't been able to get this working well since 1995 (or earlier--did Win3.1 have power management stuff in it?). Even if Vista or Windows 7 get it right, it won't matter at this point because nobody is willing to bother with power management anymore. The pain has been too great for too long for us to let it into our psyche, and it's not likely to suddenly happen now.
It's always the same story. "Technology X is no longer able to stop spammers/bots. Technology Y will solve everything though."
As long as it's an arms race of technology, it will be...an arms race. Better tech means more effort on the part of the spammers to break it. The rewards for the spammer stay constant, but the costs for the defender constantly increase.
There are only two ways to stop spam: Make it financially unsustainable, or murder everyone on this list, and repeat every six months. Note that I'm NOT advocating this behaviour, but unless you can change the price model of spam, it's the only solution.
Everything else is damage control.
Recently I went looking for some 3rd edition books, since I thought they'd be getting scarce soon.
Scarce? I was mistaken. 3.0 and 3.5 are GONE. Every local gaming store, every local used book store, every online store in Canada, and everywhere else I checked were out of old editions.
Especially curious was the fact that one of the gaming stores had about 15 full sets of 3.5 at Christmas, but by the second week of January, didn't have a single copy of any sourcebook from that era. Nada.
Does anyone know if WotC has done a big buyback? It almost seems like someone has been scouring the bookstores methodically, snatching up everything that would suggest an older edition ever existed.
Ah well, screw 'em. I'll play what I want, and if I can't buy the material, I _will_ download it. Way to go, Wizards!
They make SPARC chips (and boxes), but that doesn't make them a Unix vendor, it makes them a SPARC vendor.
And doesn't Apple qualify as commercial?
SGI claimed $526M in debt in their bankruptcy filing. However, Rackable apparently WON'T be assuming this debt! Go figure. Here's an explanation.
I agree with pretty much everything you've said here. The "code it yourself!" mentality and documentation issues get under my skin. However, there is one other issue which scares people away:
Licensing.
Yeah, it's free. It's open-source. If, as a linux neophyte, you jump onto a forum for help, you're bound to run into someone fighting over licenses (GPL3 vs. GPL2, can we use CDDL software, BSD, Apache, etc.). It just shouldn't be an issue for end users, but so many times it seems like it gets forced onto them. The easy solution is to walk away and go back to Windows.
Lack of apps, as you pointed out, is the other part. My wife teaches AutoCAD. Guess how useful Linux is to her?
HP? They're not alive because of people using HP-UX, they're alive because HP-UX is a trivial part of their business. They make laptops and printers, and that (especially the printers) is why they're alive.
Generally correct, although a few things that I would argue.
#1: IBM and HP are both companies that do something other than Unix. SGI quit selling MIPS gear and had announced the end of the road for Irix a while back. That means that Sun is the only pure Unix company left standing--and the idiotic BoD is trying to get bought by anyone willing to fatten their wallets.
Interestingly, Apple's OS X and Sun's (Open)Solaris are the only Unixes that are (a) available on commodity hardware, and (b) actively being developed. They're the only commercial competition to Linux, and Sun is the only one trying to compete on the "new model" of FOSS software and paid services.
But MIPS is dead. Alpha is dead, PA-RISC is dead, and in five years, I suspect SPARC will be dead. IRIX is dead, OSF/1 is dead, HP-UX is dying, AIX is dying, and Solaris 10 is looking shaky.
The problem I have with all of this is that for the 'outdatedness' of these old systems, Linux still behaves like a hack-job. Documentation is spotty, software development stability is questionable, and it's very clear that different parts of it were written by different people with no coherency between them.
If the old systems were disappearing because of something better coming along, I'd be happier. Unfortunately, it's not necessarily better--just faster to change.
Yep--half a billion worth.
Basically, they said "We'll take over your company and assume your debt." The $25M was almost a token sum.
This is why unpressurized casks or (in a pinch) Nitrogen-pressurized casks are far superior.
Everything you say is true--and none of it changes my claims.
What you need to do is sell me something that I can take home and use!
The moment that the market bought into the 'licensing software' bullshit was the moment that the software makers were given carte blanche on stupid crap like this. They should be beaten senseless and powerless.
Yo, everyone! Microsoft, Stardock, Adobe, Sony, and all the rest of you. I've got an idea on how you can make money here. Listen carefully, because this is very tricky.
What you need to do is sell me something that I can take home and use!
Sell me a program, let me install it and use it.
Sell me a CD, let me put it in the car and listen to it.
In short, QUIT SCREWING AROUND WITH DRM! It does NOTHING but make me less inclined to pay for your damned products! Even moreso if I need an internet connection to authorize stand-alone store-purchased software.
Oh, and a SPECIAL note for Adobe: Quit telling me every time I start a program that I REALLY REALLY should register for your online photoshop service which isn't available in my country!