Re:Who Needs Corp Support Contracts?
on
Sun-isms Debunked
·
· Score: 2, Informative
So, just how many billions of dollars is your company going to bring in this year?
Out of the box usability means NOTHING in a large environment, because everything has been custom configured, developed, tested, and rolled out in a formal process.
"Eat your heart out SUN. Linux and free BSDs are for people that love to hack this stuff out and have some idea or someone that knows what they are doing."
That statement is moderately true. Sun shines in server farms that need REAL 24x7 guaranteed uptime/availability. I maintain roughly 300 servers (average probably about 5 CPU each), and Linux isn't yet at the point where it could replace Sun in that environment.
My filesystem is journalled, and has been for about a decade longer than Linux. My hardware emails me when it's having problems, and usually detects problems before things break! I don't want quick ship-->deploy time, I want long boot/upgrade cycles and protection from problems.
Consider the source of the article
on
Sun-isms Debunked
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Without getting into the Linux/Sun arguement (which could go on forever), don't forget this relation:
Newsforge::C|Net Fox News::BBC World News (And I'm not too fond of C|Net either)
NewsForge is news about Linux, for Linux, and related to Linux. It is so utterly biased and laughable (and amateur) that any 'expose'' it does is almost entirely suspect. This article certainly was.
Re:In the hope someone important at Sun reads this
on
Sun-isms Debunked
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Fascinating to see your comments.
I'm pretty much a dyed-in-the-wool Solaris admin, but I'm quite familiar with Linux (i.e. run it, support it, deal with it). In other words, I'm coming at the same point from the opposite side of the coin.
1) I agree with the comments on 'more,' although with a caveat that more requires fewer keystrokes than less. Also, realise that less is installed by default in Solaris, and can be set as the default pager fairly easily.
2) screen. I use it at home, I never need it at work. If I need screen, then it usually means that (a)telnet/ssh is broken, and (b)I shouldn't be switching between windows anyways.
3) vim. I HATE vim!!! I DESPISE WITH A GREAT PASSION the defaults in vim! It sucks, it sucks, and it sucks. That's all there is to say about it.:-)
Seriously, vim has two advantages over Sun's vi (window size and file size), but the defaults are so painful that I can't bear to use it. I hate it I hate it Ihateit!!!!! If you need the features of vim over vi, then use emacs! (waiting for that bolt of lightning...)
Also, there is a (non-Sun approved) way of installing this stuff VERY easily. pkg-get, which is an apt-like (yes, apt generallly rocks for package installs/upgrades) front end to pkgadd.
Honestly, I think that Sun has really only got two problems, and you've hit on the biggest one: make sure your evangelists match the target audience. Jonathan Schwartz is a first-class idiot from the marketing world, and has done more to hurt Sun than all of their other problems combined. Talk to the publicly available Sun engineers (Casper, Alan, et al) and you'll realise that there are some damned fine technical people creating some damned fine products behind all of the marketing fluff. IN fact, many of them spend time fighting with the marketing people.
Unfortunately, too many dollars are committed by the marketing/sales/management staff than the technical groups, on both buying and selling ends. That's how business works.
Ultimately, I think that a lot of it boils down to familiarity. You say, "This unix geek see his linux experiences as the bar against which everything else is measured." I say that my combined SGI/Solaris/HP-UX/AIX experiences are the bar against which Linux is measured. At the end of the day, Sun isn't particularly concerned with user-friendliness, whereas Linux is.
Scary stuff. Besides, putting bombs up there will encourage other people to put bombs up there, and sooner or later we'll be back to the height of the cold war. It's only due to several small miracles that we got through the last one--let's not push our luck!
First of all, entrenching formerly illegal actions into law is NOT a good thing. The fact that they were being done before isn't a valid reason at all to make them legal.
Secondly, this law allows the US government to compel American companies operating in foreign countries to secretly hand over information on foreign employees, in violation of that country's laws. THAT'S why BC is raising the red flag on this one.
Whoops! You're entirely right. I was thinking of all of the processors that are currently selling, and PPC was on my mind as I went to take Itanium out of my list.
Curiously enough, we were talking about the future of computing at lunch today.
There was a time when different computers ran on different processors, and supported different OSes. Now what's happening? Itanic and Opteron running Linux seem to be the only growth players in the market; and the supercomputer world is completely dominated by throwing more processors together. Is there no room for substantial architectural changes? Have we hit the merging point of different designs?
Just some questions. Although it's not easy, I'm less excited by a supercomputer with 10k processors than I would be by one containing as few as 64.
Online poker is primarily a game of skill and statistics. "Face to face" poker involves all sorts of social analyses, which complicates things further.
But rest assured, there IS a statistically correct method of play, based on cards seen, odds of winning, odds of improvement, and payout odds. Luck rules from hand to hand, but statistics rule over the long term.
Back in the 50s, TV was going to be the innovation to herald a new era of education, enlightenment, and completely new entertainment. It never really achieved any of that. Most of TV's history has been political agenda-making, or brainless crap (and often both).
I don't see what would make it change now. Just look at the direction the internet has been going for the last decade.
OK, I just don't get it. On the one hand, you say you design network architectures for global banks; and on the other hand, you suggest replacing a highest-end storage system with crappy home-brew SATA arrays. The two most obvious conclusions are that you either don't know what you're talking about, or are trolling.
Do you really think that there's a chance of replacing ULTRA-high-end storage with SATA and making it work? Do you think that any money will have been saved by the end of three years? I can tell you now that the answer is no.
I was talking about the drives. We use SATA drives with an FCAL back-end connection for first-tier backups, but never for user-facing data. ALL user data comes off of SCSI or FCAL drives running in a fibre-attached disk system. Of course, we're a moderately large shop--roughly 35TB of front-end data.
Comparing SCSI vs. IDE, the former will provide better reliability and FAR better performance for multi-access scenarios (which is essentially everything except one-machine one-disk one-user setups).
For certain situations (large amounts of low-access data, or nearline storage) ATA works. For nearly all enterprise applications though, it's the wrong solution from a performance, availability, and reliability perspective.
Now go back to your parents' basement, and pretend you have a clue about enterprise environments. In the meantime, read these hints.
SO YOU WANT TO MAKE YOUR OWN ENTERPRISE RAID SYSTEM (from 'clues for the terminally clueless')
First of all, get your hardware right. SATA doesn't cut it in the real world. Modern SCSI is acceptable for small to medium systems, but large-scale is FCAL all the way, and that costs money. Count on $1800/146GB drive, or $12.50/GB. Add cabinets ($10,000/14-disks or about $5/GB) and you're already up to 12% of IBM's LIST price, or about 20% of what you'll actually pay for a small system. Now consider that IBM's price will scale up quite nicely. $97k/580GB is the (listed) entry level, but additional storage on an existing system will probably run about half of that figure.
Now add RAID controllers, computers, networking gear, redundant power supplies, and all of that good stuff. You're going to end up spending about $25/GB. From IBM, you'll probably spend about $45 for a decently large system (figuring 40% discount on the price listed). For that (still significant) cost savings, are you willing to bet your entire company's future, including guaranteed hardware and software support for the next three years?
Enterprise gear is expensive. Enterprises need that gear. It's not difficult once you've actually worked in a large shop, but kiddies playing at home still think they can do better for a fraction of the cost. Give it up.
1) This isn't a court of law, it's slashdot. We have no such requirements or protections. 2) He's been found guilty of so many related crimes in the past that (outside of a court) he's pretty much already guilty of this one. 3) He's admitted committing the act (although not admitted any wrongdoing). 4) "Innocent until proven guilty" isn't an absolute, even in the US Supreme court. Take a look at your drug laws, which put the onus on the defendent to prove himself innocent.
Seeing as how buying a Sun machine from Sun includes a license for the OS, I don't see a problem with them charging for using it. It's a commercial product! They wrote it over many years, and are trying to run a profitable company. Why shouldn't they be entitled to sell it to grey-market buyers at whatever price they want?
Maybe I'm just old, but my first association when I hear those words together is the red and blue albums, with the Apple Records logo on the label.
Apple computers might actually benefit from a perceived connection with Apple Records. More to the point, if Apple totally tanks then any apparent connection between the companies could hurt Apple Corps.
That's why they cut a contract, and that's why the music company is determined to force the computer company to uphold that contract.
Star Trek. I'm SICK TO THE TEETH of Star Trek! Every SF show that's been created in North America since 1980 (except for Max Headroom--woo!) has either been Star Trek, or a ripoff of it. Why does every damned futuristic show have to be bloody STAR TREK????
SF is a great genre full of intelligent, thoughtful, provoking plots. Throw a TV exec or three at it though, and it all degenerates into Star Trek.
Star Trek was great in its day, but it's now been nearly 40 years since it all started. Can't we come up with ONE original SF show? StarHunter is the best we've got right now (which ain't all bad), but as long as we have Star Trek around, nearly every SF show that gets to TV will be a boring clone of it. Again.
Slashdot Mirror
So, just how many billions of dollars is your company going to bring in this year?
Out of the box usability means NOTHING in a large environment, because everything has been custom configured, developed, tested, and rolled out in a formal process.
"Eat your heart out SUN. Linux and free BSDs are for people that love to hack this stuff out and have some idea or someone that knows what they are doing."
That statement is moderately true. Sun shines in server farms that need REAL 24x7 guaranteed uptime/availability. I maintain roughly 300 servers (average probably about 5 CPU each), and Linux isn't yet at the point where it could replace Sun in that environment.
My filesystem is journalled, and has been for about a decade longer than Linux. My hardware emails me when it's having problems, and usually detects problems before things break! I don't want quick ship-->deploy time, I want long boot/upgrade cycles and protection from problems.
Without getting into the Linux/Sun arguement (which could go on forever), don't forget this relation:
Newsforge::C|Net
Fox News::BBC World News
(And I'm not too fond of C|Net either)
NewsForge is news about Linux, for Linux, and related to Linux. It is so utterly biased and laughable (and amateur) that any 'expose'' it does is almost entirely suspect. This article certainly was.
Fascinating to see your comments.
:-)
I'm pretty much a dyed-in-the-wool Solaris admin, but I'm quite familiar with Linux (i.e. run it, support it, deal with it). In other words, I'm coming at the same point from the opposite side of the coin.
1) I agree with the comments on 'more,' although with a caveat that more requires fewer keystrokes than less. Also, realise that less is installed by default in Solaris, and can be set as the default pager fairly easily.
2) screen. I use it at home, I never need it at work. If I need screen, then it usually means that (a)telnet/ssh is broken, and (b)I shouldn't be switching between windows anyways.
3) vim. I HATE vim!!! I DESPISE WITH A GREAT PASSION the defaults in vim! It sucks, it sucks, and it sucks. That's all there is to say about it.
Seriously, vim has two advantages over Sun's vi (window size and file size), but the defaults are so painful that I can't bear to use it. I hate it I hate it Ihateit!!!!! If you need the features of vim over vi, then use emacs! (waiting for that bolt of lightning...)
Also, there is a (non-Sun approved) way of installing this stuff VERY easily. pkg-get, which is an apt-like (yes, apt generallly rocks for package installs/upgrades) front end to pkgadd.
Honestly, I think that Sun has really only got two problems, and you've hit on the biggest one: make sure your evangelists match the target audience. Jonathan Schwartz is a first-class idiot from the marketing world, and has done more to hurt Sun than all of their other problems combined. Talk to the publicly available Sun engineers (Casper, Alan, et al) and you'll realise that there are some damned fine technical people creating some damned fine products behind all of the marketing fluff. IN fact, many of them spend time fighting with the marketing people.
Unfortunately, too many dollars are committed by the marketing/sales/management staff than the technical groups, on both buying and selling ends. That's how business works.
Ultimately, I think that a lot of it boils down to familiarity. You say, "This unix geek see his linux experiences as the bar against which everything else is measured." I say that my combined SGI/Solaris/HP-UX/AIX experiences are the bar against which Linux is measured. At the end of the day, Sun isn't particularly concerned with user-friendliness, whereas Linux is.
Who the fuck cares?
Who the fuck wants to run Solaris in a watch? That's the STUPIDEST FUCKING DUMB FUCKING idea I've EVER heard!
OK, that's an overstatement. Reelecting Bush was worse. Solaris/(shite device) is a close second.
Heh. Agreed. Tubes are excellent at producing sound, but not necessarily great at reproducing it.
You mean this patriot system? The one that was almost a complete disaster?
Scary stuff. Besides, putting bombs up there will encourage other people to put bombs up there, and sooner or later we'll be back to the height of the cold war. It's only due to several small miracles that we got through the last one--let's not push our luck!
He SAID it was a JOKE!
Sheesh.
Are you suggesting violent protests if he wins legitimately? Or only if he illegally steals the election again?
Pretty much. Sadly, your country doesn't seem to be doing much to fix those policies.
First of all, entrenching formerly illegal actions into law is NOT a good thing. The fact that they were being done before isn't a valid reason at all to make them legal.
Secondly, this law allows the US government to compel American companies operating in foreign countries to secretly hand over information on foreign employees, in violation of that country's laws. THAT'S why BC is raising the red flag on this one.
Heh. Just the sort of thing I needed to read at 6:00am, on another damned insomniac night.
Cheers, eh!
Whoops! You're entirely right. I was thinking of all of the processors that are currently selling, and PPC was on my mind as I went to take Itanium out of my list.
Curiously enough, we were talking about the future of computing at lunch today.
There was a time when different computers ran on different processors, and supported different OSes. Now what's happening? Itanic and Opteron running Linux seem to be the only growth players in the market; and the supercomputer world is completely dominated by throwing more processors together. Is there no room for substantial architectural changes? Have we hit the merging point of different designs?
Just some questions. Although it's not easy, I'm less excited by a supercomputer with 10k processors than I would be by one containing as few as 64.
You apparently know roughly nothing about poker.
Online poker is primarily a game of skill and statistics. "Face to face" poker involves all sorts of social analyses, which complicates things further.
But rest assured, there IS a statistically correct method of play, based on cards seen, odds of winning, odds of improvement, and payout odds. Luck rules from hand to hand, but statistics rule over the long term.
Man, I don't BELIEVE that I missed Matt Ruff's new book release.
For those who don't know him, go find Fool on the Hill. NOW!
Back in the 50s, TV was going to be the innovation to herald a new era of education, enlightenment, and completely new entertainment. It never really achieved any of that. Most of TV's history has been political agenda-making, or brainless crap (and often both).
I don't see what would make it change now. Just look at the direction the internet has been going for the last decade.
OK, I just don't get it. On the one hand, you say you design network architectures for global banks; and on the other hand, you suggest replacing a highest-end storage system with crappy home-brew SATA arrays. The two most obvious conclusions are that you either don't know what you're talking about, or are trolling.
Do you really think that there's a chance of replacing ULTRA-high-end storage with SATA and making it work? Do you think that any money will have been saved by the end of three years? I can tell you now that the answer is no.
I was talking about the drives. We use SATA drives with an FCAL back-end connection for first-tier backups, but never for user-facing data. ALL user data comes off of SCSI or FCAL drives running in a fibre-attached disk system. Of course, we're a moderately large shop--roughly 35TB of front-end data.
Comparing SCSI vs. IDE, the former will provide better reliability and FAR better performance for multi-access scenarios (which is essentially everything except one-machine one-disk one-user setups).
For certain situations (large amounts of low-access data, or nearline storage) ATA works. For nearly all enterprise applications though, it's the wrong solution from a performance, availability, and reliability perspective.
Yes. Yes, it is.
Now go back to your parents' basement, and pretend you have a clue about enterprise environments. In the meantime, read these hints.
SO YOU WANT TO MAKE YOUR OWN ENTERPRISE RAID SYSTEM
(from 'clues for the terminally clueless')
First of all, get your hardware right. SATA doesn't cut it in the real world. Modern SCSI is acceptable for small to medium systems, but large-scale is FCAL all the way, and that costs money. Count on $1800/146GB drive, or $12.50/GB. Add cabinets ($10,000/14-disks or about $5/GB) and you're already up to 12% of IBM's LIST price, or about 20% of what you'll actually pay for a small system. Now consider that IBM's price will scale up quite nicely. $97k/580GB is the (listed) entry level, but additional storage on an existing system will probably run about half of that figure.
Now add RAID controllers, computers, networking gear, redundant power supplies, and all of that good stuff. You're going to end up spending about $25/GB. From IBM, you'll probably spend about $45 for a decently large system (figuring 40% discount on the price listed). For that (still significant) cost savings, are you willing to bet your entire company's future, including guaranteed hardware and software support for the next three years?
Enterprise gear is expensive. Enterprises need that gear. It's not difficult once you've actually worked in a large shop, but kiddies playing at home still think they can do better for a fraction of the cost. Give it up.
OK Linux troll, if you're not going to be programming on Solaris/Sparc systems, why are you bothering to even post in this story?
Four points:
1) This isn't a court of law, it's slashdot. We have no such requirements or protections.
2) He's been found guilty of so many related crimes in the past that (outside of a court) he's pretty much already guilty of this one.
3) He's admitted committing the act (although not admitted any wrongdoing).
4) "Innocent until proven guilty" isn't an absolute, even in the US Supreme court. Take a look at your drug laws, which put the onus on the defendent to prove himself innocent.
Seeing as how buying a Sun machine from Sun includes a license for the OS, I don't see a problem with them charging for using it. It's a commercial product! They wrote it over many years, and are trying to run a profitable company. Why shouldn't they be entitled to sell it to grey-market buyers at whatever price they want?
"Apple Music."
Maybe I'm just old, but my first association when I hear those words together is the red and blue albums, with the Apple Records logo on the label.
Apple computers might actually benefit from a perceived connection with Apple Records. More to the point, if Apple totally tanks then any apparent connection between the companies could hurt Apple Corps.
That's why they cut a contract, and that's why the music company is determined to force the computer company to uphold that contract.
If you keep reading into their website, you're quite right.
/. is no more misleading than the company itself.
However, the very first sentence on their page is:
"Our software allows any softwware application binary to run on any processor/operating system."
So
Star Trek. I'm SICK TO THE TEETH of Star Trek! Every SF show that's been created in North America since 1980 (except for Max Headroom--woo!) has either been Star Trek, or a ripoff of it. Why does every damned futuristic show have to be bloody STAR TREK????
SF is a great genre full of intelligent, thoughtful, provoking plots. Throw a TV exec or three at it though, and it all degenerates into Star Trek.
Star Trek was great in its day, but it's now been nearly 40 years since it all started. Can't we come up with ONE original SF show? StarHunter is the best we've got right now (which ain't all bad), but as long as we have Star Trek around, nearly every SF show that gets to TV will be a boring clone of it. Again.