Not all apps can be run on clusters of cheapo Intel! Who's *actually* running Oracle RAC on Lintel, really? Who, apart from Google, runs a set up like Google?
For example, if you're a Sun customer, like and use Solaris, you buy the low cost Sun boxes for the front end and rely on warranty for your maintenance needs. When you have an app that benefits from larger SMP boxes, you buy the larger SMP boxes and maybe rely on warranty if they're horizontally scalable apps, like say, app servers, running on 480s or v880s for example.
On your really large SMP apps, campus clusters, massive server consolidations, mainframe replacement F15Ks and the like, you buy a service contract.
Cheap Intel hardware isn't some amazing panacea that's going to replace large machines. Theres's also the cost of managing all those small boxes to take into account. A couple of reliable and available SMP Unix boxes can well be more cost effective than lots of little boxes.
The heat is extremely relevant - if it runs 4 to 5 times hotter than equivalent RISC boxes, it's going to need a very large cabinet with a tonne of fans. It's going to eat power, it's going to take a lot of space and it's not going to be welcome in corporate datacentres. Add to that the fact that it's supposed to oust incumbent architectures and OSes that have already proved themselves 'time and again' and Itanic is in a tough position.
So we end up with multiple cards, separate information stores and the same mess?
It seems to me you're advocating continuing as we are, which means a confusion of varying methods of identifying people, with no proper control or regulation, or efficiency. The only people who benefit from that are criminals.
We have a mix of various documents that one uses when one needs to identify oneself, which is ridiculous. This is stupid and should be reformed.
If you did have to id yourself, for whatever reason, not having a passport or driving licence makes it hard to do so. Having a proper id would make it easy.
I presume you have a bank account, even though you don't drive and don't leave the country?
David Blunkett had his id stolen recently by someone who bought a copy of his birth cert from St Cath's house. I think it was Paul Kenyon, the 'campaigning' journalist. It showed clearly how not having a proper system means it can be chronically abused.
So what's the answer? Continue with the current debacle, where we have all the negative effects of ID cards thanks to the 'de facto' situation I've described, with none of the benefits, with police time being wasted, citizens' time being wasted and the whole situation a total joke, with privacy being removed by stealth by unaccountable corporations (my gas bill!) rather than elected governments?
Invading a field/warehouse, taking truckloads of drugs, making a noise and leaving a load of mess deserves police intervention:)
What 'good German' attitude? I was merely pointing out that the Germans get on well, are a free society and have ID cards, which they get along fine with, without anyone bursting into tears about civil liberty.
Of course you 'go out and talk to people', although I'm confused about the talking sweater. Try tracking down the slightly bigger criminals or tracking international fraud without access to more sophisticated channels of info. Why shouldn't those multiple channels be combined practically?
Do you object to things like Interpol sharing information?
Liberty? Can you expand what you mean by that? It's a rather nebulous statement.
We do have 'de facto' ID cards - let me explain to you what 'de facto' means. It means, in this case, that whilst there is no official ID card, there are a number of other documents we carry which, in effect, carry out the same purpose. So we already have a 'de facto' ID card system - and haven't lost any nebulous 'liberties'. Having something more efficient and with more legal grounding would be better for everyone.
So why shouldn't we carry proper ID cards? We already carry them anyway, to a great extent. As for contractors abusing the information, that's a totally invalid argument!
Have *you* ever read the German constitution? Do enlighten us about how they are less free than us!
As is made clear in my post, you don't have to register where you live in the UK, but you do in Germany - so what? How does this affect my 'liberty'?
I understand very well that all the data is linked together and I'm glad! It'll make it much easier to carry out the bureaucracy of our daily lives. And this info is, again, de facto linked together anyway. The police can access all this info anyway if they want - so what if it take them less time? They have this info anyway - how do you think they investigate criminals? Linking it makes it easier for them to do their job, which is not to hassle innocent citizens, but to enforce the rule of law.
Finally what countries have you been visiting that you don't want the police to know about?
So tell us, who cares if someone under suspicion of a crime has the police use CCTV? It'd clear me of any wrongdoing pretty quickly if innocent, or help convict me, if I were guilty. Sounds pretty good to me.
>>What if you were a citizen that had some undue >interest (celebrities, financial types, etc) and >some CCTV footage of you meeting with someone >turned up? What if you went someplace out of the >ordinary to meet this person for whatever reason, >yet you were on CCTV?
What exactly do we have to lose? A ludicrously inefficient system where we all have a multitude of de facto ID cards and no proper organised standard? We already have birth certificates, driving licences, passports, credit/debit cards, National Insurance numbers, etc, etc - it's a total mess.
What freedoms do we in the UK have that someone in, say, Germany doesn't? Based on my experience, we have very similar liberties - it just takes a lot longer in the UK to prove who you are, for whatever reason. And you have to register where you live - big deal! Also, shock horror, you have to make sure you have documentation in your car that proves you're insured and shows who the car is registered to. If we love that in Britain the only 'freedom' lost will be the ability to steal cars and drive without insurance as easily as one can at the moment.
Yes - the countries where you have to do everything the cop asks you to have no true democracy, little rule of law, are corrupt and generally not very nice places to live.
Why would the UK govt suddenly 'remove the safeguards'? You can't do that kind of thing in modern Western democracies and their govts have no interest in doing so either.
Equally, I don't care in the least if I'm legally obliged to identify myself to the police. The current situation simply takes longer - you get arrested if you refuse to id yourself and they find out eventually anyway. As a perfectly decent,law abiding citizen I'd be quite happy to id myself and then go on my way.
First of all, that's an argument for Solaris, not for Sparc.
Secondly, there are hundreds of thousands of customers all around the world who buy 'server hardware' with more than 3Gbs of memory.
Thirdly most companies are consolidating the millions of el-cheapo boxes all over the place onto large machines - it's cheaper in terms of the whole package, which means what it costs once all the factors are included. x86 may be cheap to buy, but 'cheap to buy' is one of the many many business decsisions involved in making IT choices.
I use the client from www.iconnecthere.com, called PC Phone (Windows only) to call the UK from the Middle East. When you set it up there's an option to choose which server you go through - US or 'Europe'.
>The kernel is the kernel regradless of which >distibution you favor and IS quite ready...no >"might be" or "maybe" to it.
That's fair enough, but a kernel is not the finished, supported, product most IT Managers want.
>Sun, the makers of Solaris are in fact slowly >adopting linux (even putting out their own >distibution).
That's true - and they position it very carefully at the low end, non-mission critical, 'doesn't matter if it breaks' end of the spectrum.
>The Red Hat Linux distribution addresses that >issue with their three year life span products. >So now I imagine that the overhead a business >creates is dependant on how well they plan and >implement thier strategy.
How long will they continue to support that version? You get a new version of Solaris once every 2-3 years, which Sun will support for another 5 years after last ship date. You can still download patches, for free, for Solaris 2.5.1 from SunSolve.
>Curiously you never mentioned the overhead >created by proprietary software makers impose >when tight NDA's and limited (or zero) access to >software source code is a factor!
Because that is utterly, utterly irrelevant to the vast majorities of businesses.
>Multiple versions of "fill_in_the_blank" OS, with >a hodge podge cllection of "service packs" and >"hot fixes" (which by the way leave your business >at the whim of the proprietary software makers >schedule) also create enormous overhead for >management to deal with.
So avoid using MSFT. And you're at the whim of various Linux influences as well, when you're waiting for fixes, except you have no recourse when the patch you get screws up. You may well be able to fix source code yourself, but most businesses don't have the will, the money, or the intention to have someone with those abilities sitting around.
>>So even with proprietary software makers you >will still have "multiple versions" at "multiple >patch levels" with "varying support contracts" >and "varying details to take care of etc etc".
True, and adding Linux to the mix solves nothing.
>If you don't think Solaris and HPUX have those >then you are sadly misinformed or just plain >don't know much about them.
Taking Solaris, you have one OS, maybe different versions, lying around your server room - support from one vendor, apps certified to one OS, ISVs working to anything but the moving goal post that is Linux, patches freely available,supported by a company with years of experience in managing the business cycle, not just the technical cycle of managing multiple systems.
>...but then you would be entering those "varying >support contact" and "varying patch level" with >"varying detail" issues you spoke about.
You're sticking with the same vendor and the process is supported and controlled. One point of contact for support. Not a problem.
>...distros have muscled into markets that was >once dominated by closed source proprietary >giants by providing stablility and delivering >what they promise to deliver. I believe that to >be "productive results" at affordable prices with >technologically sound software!
I agree - at the very low end, where reliability and support are less important and where you have highly skilled sys admins, Linux has done really well. If you want to see it running those 24 cpu databases, running stuff in banks, etc, etc a lot of the freedom that make Linux flexible and fun are going to go away and you will have exactly the same kind of strict control and process that you get with the big Unix vendors.
I'd have to disagree there. You're saying Linux scales well above 4 cpus? That contradicts everything I've read and heard. Also, the V880 and V480 are extremely well priced with better features compared to the equivalent Dell.
I'd also question the application support, if you want more than general OSS stuff, or if you want stuff that's reasonably proven in the market.
Interesting. If what you're saying is true, it's your account rep who should be taking the resonsbility for this mess, not 'Sun'. There are plenty of other customers who get good service. Complain to the guy's manager. I know you shouldn't have to, but if you've got such a pair of duds working for you, you need to get them changed!
Should also add, that the point is that whilst Linux might 'technically' be ready, it might not be ready in business terms. The trouble is that each vendor you mention is supporting multiple different versions of Linux and that there are issues with who certifies what. So, as a business you have multiple versions of multiple distros at varying patch levels, varying support contracts, varying details to take care of, etc, etc, all of which is a management overhead you don't want and which you don't get with Solaris, HPUX, etc.
Oh for God's sake, stop moaning and go and buy a copy for $50. It's not exactly going to break the bank!!!! Or just use OpenOffice, it's pretty much the same thing.
Firstly USIII is not trounced in every benchmark. Equally cpu benchmarks can be totally irrelevant to whether your system runs a real world application well or not. Is your business running a SPEC benchmark, or Oracle?
Itanium 2? Who's actually selling these systems in volume? What OS are they supposed to run? What apps are they supposed to run? Best of all, have you seen how hot they run?
What 'most cases' would you care to mention? In the cases where Linux is 'good enough', Sun will sell you an LX50. When Linux doesn't scale, when decent support is required, when the app doesn't even run on Linx...
Don't forget too that IT is more than just an OS. There are support issues, consulting services, account management, reference sites and other things to take care of to keep customers happy.
But even staying with pure technical issues, what 'most cases' are you referring to?
To be quite honest, I suspect that with two major sets of redundancies over the last year, this OpenBSD problem has fallen through the cracks as jobs get lost, responsibilities change, etc, etc.
Frankly I can see why some request about something as irrelevant as OpenBSD (in terms of doing what's needed to keep one's job in the short term) is going to go to the bottom of people's 'to do' list.
Looking for exciting conspiracy theories about OpenBSD somehow being a threat to Sun is rather futile.
Slashdot Mirror
Not all apps can be run on clusters of cheapo Intel! Who's *actually* running Oracle RAC on Lintel, really? Who, apart from Google, runs a set up like Google?
For example, if you're a Sun customer, like and use Solaris, you buy the low cost Sun boxes for the front end and rely on warranty for your maintenance needs. When you have an app that benefits from larger SMP boxes, you buy the larger SMP boxes and maybe rely on warranty if they're horizontally scalable apps, like say, app servers, running on 480s or v880s for example.
On your really large SMP apps, campus clusters, massive server consolidations, mainframe replacement F15Ks and the like, you buy a service contract.
Cheap Intel hardware isn't some amazing panacea that's going to replace large machines. Theres's also the cost of managing all those small boxes to take into account. A couple of reliable and available SMP Unix boxes can well be more cost effective than lots of little boxes.
The heat is extremely relevant - if it runs 4 to 5 times hotter than equivalent RISC boxes, it's going to need a very large cabinet with a tonne of fans. It's going to eat power, it's going to take a lot of space and it's not going to be welcome in corporate datacentres. Add to that the fact that it's supposed to oust incumbent architectures and OSes that have already proved themselves 'time and again' and Itanic is in a tough position.
So we end up with multiple cards, separate information stores and the same mess?
It seems to me you're advocating continuing as we are, which means a confusion of varying methods of identifying people, with no proper control or regulation, or efficiency. The only people who benefit from that are criminals.
I think your're missing the point.
We have a mix of various documents that one uses when one needs to identify oneself, which is ridiculous. This is stupid and should be reformed.
If you did have to id yourself, for whatever reason, not having a passport or driving licence makes it hard to do so. Having a proper id would make it easy.
I presume you have a bank account, even though you don't drive and don't leave the country?
David Blunkett had his id stolen recently by someone who bought a copy of his birth cert from St Cath's house. I think it was Paul Kenyon, the 'campaigning' journalist. It showed clearly how not having a proper system means it can be chronically abused.
You have to register where you live in Germany is what was meant.
So what's the answer? Continue with the current debacle, where we have all the negative effects of ID cards thanks to the 'de facto' situation I've described, with none of the benefits, with police time being wasted, citizens' time being wasted and the whole situation a total joke, with privacy being removed by stealth by unaccountable corporations (my gas bill!) rather than elected governments?
:)
Invading a field/warehouse, taking truckloads of drugs, making a noise and leaving a load of mess deserves police intervention
What 'good German' attitude? I was merely pointing out that the Germans get on well, are a free society and have ID cards, which they get along fine with, without anyone bursting into tears about civil liberty.
Of course you 'go out and talk to people', although I'm confused about the talking sweater. Try tracking down the slightly bigger criminals or tracking international fraud without access to more sophisticated channels of info. Why shouldn't those multiple channels be combined practically?
Do you object to things like Interpol sharing information?
Liberty? Can you expand what you mean by that? It's a rather nebulous statement.
We do have 'de facto' ID cards - let me explain to you what 'de facto' means. It means, in this case, that whilst there is no official ID card, there are a number of other documents we carry which, in effect, carry out the same purpose. So we already have a 'de facto' ID card system - and haven't lost any nebulous 'liberties'. Having something more efficient and with more legal grounding would be better for everyone.
So why shouldn't we carry proper ID cards? We already carry them anyway, to a great extent. As for contractors abusing the information, that's a totally invalid argument!
Have *you* ever read the German constitution? Do enlighten us about how they are less free than us!
As is made clear in my post, you don't have to register where you live in the UK, but you do in Germany - so what? How does this affect my 'liberty'?
I understand very well that all the data is linked together and I'm glad! It'll make it much easier to carry out the bureaucracy of our daily lives. And this info is, again, de facto linked together anyway. The police can access all this info anyway if they want - so what if it take them less time? They have this info anyway - how do you think they investigate criminals? Linking it makes it easier for them to do their job, which is not to hassle innocent citizens, but to enforce the rule of law.
Finally what countries have you been visiting that you don't want the police to know about?
I'd do so quite happily. I'd even make them a cup of tea and get some Hob Nobs out of the cupboard.
So tell us, who cares if someone under suspicion of a crime has the police use CCTV? It'd clear me of any wrongdoing pretty quickly if innocent, or help convict me, if I were guilty. Sounds pretty good to me.
>>What if you were a citizen that had some undue >interest (celebrities, financial types, etc) and >some CCTV footage of you meeting with someone >turned up? What if you went someplace out of the >ordinary to meet this person for whatever reason, >yet you were on CCTV?
Not sure what you're trying to say here...
Hear hear. We have better TV as well :)
What exactly do we have to lose? A ludicrously inefficient system where we all have a multitude of de facto ID cards and no proper organised standard? We already have birth certificates, driving licences, passports, credit/debit cards, National Insurance numbers, etc, etc - it's a total mess.
What freedoms do we in the UK have that someone in, say, Germany doesn't? Based on my experience, we have very similar liberties - it just takes a lot longer in the UK to prove who you are, for whatever reason. And you have to register where you live - big deal! Also, shock horror, you have to make sure you have documentation in your car that proves you're insured and shows who the car is registered to. If we love that in Britain the only 'freedom' lost will be the ability to steal cars and drive without insurance as easily as one can at the moment.
Stop whingeing!
Yes - the countries where you have to do everything the cop asks you to have no true democracy, little rule of law, are corrupt and generally not very nice places to live.
,law abiding citizen I'd be quite happy to id myself and then go on my way.
Why would the UK govt suddenly 'remove the safeguards'? You can't do that kind of thing in modern Western democracies and their govts have no interest in doing so either.
Equally, I don't care in the least if I'm legally obliged to identify myself to the police. The current situation simply takes longer - you get arrested if you refuse to id yourself and they find out eventually anyway. As a perfectly decent
First of all, that's an argument for Solaris, not for Sparc.
Secondly, there are hundreds of thousands of customers all around the world who buy 'server hardware' with more than 3Gbs of memory.
Thirdly most companies are consolidating the millions of el-cheapo boxes all over the place onto large machines - it's cheaper in terms of the whole package, which means what it costs once all the factors are included. x86 may be cheap to buy, but 'cheap to buy' is one of the many many business decsisions involved in making IT choices.
I use the client from www.iconnecthere.com, called PC Phone (Windows only) to call the UK from the Middle East. When you set it up there's an option to choose which server you go through - US or 'Europe'.
OK to a point, but some responses.
>The kernel is the kernel regradless of which >distibution you favor and IS quite ready...no >"might be" or "maybe" to it.
That's fair enough, but a kernel is not the finished, supported, product most IT Managers want.
>Sun, the makers of Solaris are in fact slowly >adopting linux (even putting out their own >distibution).
That's true - and they position it very carefully at the low end, non-mission critical, 'doesn't matter if it breaks' end of the spectrum.
>The Red Hat Linux distribution addresses that >issue with their three year life span products. >So now I imagine that the overhead a business >creates is dependant on how well they plan and >implement thier strategy.
How long will they continue to support that version? You get a new version of Solaris once every 2-3 years, which Sun will support for another 5 years after last ship date. You can still download patches, for free, for Solaris 2.5.1 from SunSolve.
>Curiously you never mentioned the overhead >created by proprietary software makers impose >when tight NDA's and limited (or zero) access to >software source code is a factor!
Because that is utterly, utterly irrelevant to the vast majorities of businesses.
>Multiple versions of "fill_in_the_blank" OS, with >a hodge podge cllection of "service packs" and >"hot fixes" (which by the way leave your business >at the whim of the proprietary software makers >schedule) also create enormous overhead for >management to deal with.
So avoid using MSFT. And you're at the whim of various Linux influences as well, when you're waiting for fixes, except you have no recourse when the patch you get screws up. You may well be able to fix source code yourself, but most businesses don't have the will, the money, or the intention to have someone with those abilities sitting around.
>>So even with proprietary software makers you >will still have "multiple versions" at "multiple >patch levels" with "varying support contracts" >and "varying details to take care of etc etc".
True, and adding Linux to the mix solves nothing.
>If you don't think Solaris and HPUX have those >then you are sadly misinformed or just plain >don't know much about them.
Taking Solaris, you have one OS, maybe different versions, lying around your server room - support from one vendor, apps certified to one OS, ISVs working to anything but the moving goal post that is Linux, patches freely available,supported by a company with years of experience in managing the business cycle, not just the technical cycle of managing multiple systems.
>...but then you would be entering those "varying >support contact" and "varying patch level" with >"varying detail" issues you spoke about.
You're sticking with the same vendor and the process is supported and controlled. One point of contact for support. Not a problem.
>...distros have muscled into markets that was >once dominated by closed source proprietary >giants by providing stablility and delivering >what they promise to deliver. I believe that to >be "productive results" at affordable prices with >technologically sound software!
I agree - at the very low end, where reliability and support are less important and where you have highly skilled sys admins, Linux has done really well. If you want to see it running those 24 cpu databases, running stuff in banks, etc, etc a lot of the freedom that make Linux flexible and fun are going to go away and you will have exactly the same kind of strict control and process that you get with the big Unix vendors.
I'd have to disagree there. You're saying Linux scales well above 4 cpus? That contradicts everything I've read and heard. Also, the V880 and V480 are extremely well priced with better features compared to the equivalent Dell.
I'd also question the application support, if you want more than general OSS stuff, or if you want stuff that's reasonably proven in the market.
Interesting. If what you're saying is true, it's your account rep who should be taking the resonsbility for this mess, not 'Sun'. There are plenty of other customers who get good service. Complain to the guy's manager. I know you shouldn't have to, but if you've got such a pair of duds working for you, you need to get them changed!
Should also add, that the point is that whilst Linux might 'technically' be ready, it might not be ready in business terms. The trouble is that each vendor you mention is supporting multiple different versions of Linux and that there are issues with who certifies what. So, as a business you have multiple versions of multiple distros at varying patch levels, varying support contracts, varying details to take care of, etc, etc, all of which is a management overhead you don't want and which you don't get with Solaris, HPUX, etc.
Fair enough!
:)
Although I do think the reference to Google is a bit irrelevant - pretty niche use of Linux, but the others are fine
Oh for God's sake, stop moaning and go and buy a copy for $50. It's not exactly going to break the bank!!!! Or just use OpenOffice, it's pretty much the same thing.
I know you're trolling but...
Firstly USIII is not trounced in every benchmark. Equally cpu benchmarks can be totally irrelevant to whether your system runs a real world application well or not. Is your business running a SPEC benchmark, or Oracle?
Itanium 2? Who's actually selling these systems in volume? What OS are they supposed to run? What apps are they supposed to run? Best of all, have you seen how hot they run?
What 'most cases' would you care to mention? In the cases where Linux is 'good enough', Sun will sell you an LX50. When Linux doesn't scale, when decent support is required, when the app doesn't even run on Linx...
Don't forget too that IT is more than just an OS. There are support issues, consulting services, account management, reference sites and other things to take care of to keep customers happy.
But even staying with pure technical issues, what 'most cases' are you referring to?
To be quite honest, I suspect that with two major sets of redundancies over the last year, this OpenBSD problem has fallen through the cracks as jobs get lost, responsibilities change, etc, etc.
Frankly I can see why some request about something as irrelevant as OpenBSD (in terms of doing what's needed to keep one's job in the short term) is going to go to the bottom of people's 'to do' list.
Looking for exciting conspiracy theories about OpenBSD somehow being a threat to Sun is rather futile.
Hmm, you clearly base your IT purchasing decisions on relevant criteria.
Or maybe you're talking utter rubbish.