More to the point, SVG hasn't been taking over the Web. Maybe it has some inherent flaws? If so, could it be that WVG fixes some of them? Or would MS have some other plausible excuse to be only 90% compatible, other than proprietary lock-in?
On the other hand, will WVG be independently implementable, or will it be encumbered by patents, copyrights or something the like?
>
Netscape lost out to IE
[...]
> AltaVista lost out to Google
> WordPerfect lost out to Word
[...]
> Quark will eventually lose out to InDesign
>
> In each example, the dominant, familiar, easy-to-use solution was replaced
How exactly were Netscape, AltaVista or WordPerfect easier to use than their successors? Quite to the contrary.
Regarding InDesign, are you a prophet to tell Quark's doom, or do you have interesting insider information as to why Quark can't possibly leapfrog InDesign?
As usual, the ideal solution would be free firmware, but a big step forward would be the adoption of OpenFirmware, a Forth-based open standard already used in Alphas, Sparcs and Powers.
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I learned long ago that Apple will abandon their loyal customers at the drop of a hat. I've seen it over and over.
True enough. Free basic iTools service, the free upgrade to a stable version of Mac OS X, Mac OS X support for pre-G3 systems, and so on... I gave up one-&-a-half year and now am happily running Debian GNU/Linux on my iBooks.
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I was overprotected and when it came my time to live life, I was unprepaired.
I agree authority alone isn't enough a reason, and there must be a balance. But apart from inability to spell you haven't shown in what your unpreparedness consisted.
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Combining these efforts should help both companies reduce costs, by spreading lower development costs over more CPUs, and might help them compete with the new IA-32 based competitors.
Actually mergers tend to diminish the competitiveness of the platform. Instead of two entities competing against each other, you have one only with a reassuring proprietary lock-in that tends to make them lazy. Not to mention that culture clashes tend to impair the ability to execute.
Now if they were migrating, as separate entities, to, say, the POWER architecture, they would loose lots of proprietary lock-in, but at least the whole platform would be more viable -- if migrating to something like POWER they could even merge that they still would have competition to keep them on their toes, and customers would have the reassurance of alternative sources of supply.
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Sun should focus on software and complete solutions, and stop messing with processors
Sun has a proprietary lock-in with tons of Solaris SPARC applications on its customers.
Besides, if Sun just built IPF computers just as everyone does, it would be on its path to irrelevance, and this path is already leaded by Unisys. It would be very little to differentiate from Unisys, Dell and the such, and margins would suffer accordingly.
As it is, UltraSPARC systems are faster than Intel ones, even if processors are slower, simply because you can buy a system with lotsa processors, lotsa very fast memory to cache your database in, a great system bus and a stable, proven OS. AMD64 and IA-64 are just too recent, and there's just to much MS there.
I could see Sun migrating to, say, POWER. But even there the benefits would be doubtful. The real benefits would perhaps come from fully supporting GNU/Linux as an alternative on par with Solaris.
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a focused Linux strategy, but you can bet that Fujitsu does. In addition to the PrimePower line of SPARC-based servers
Yet the Fujitsu PrimePower web page says nothing about GNU/Linux. Perhaps it is a GNU/Linux strategy focusing on ignoring GNU/Linux, or even not existing at all?
And yes, I know all these facts you cite. But you overlook my evaluations: that all non-x86 platform ports were suboptimised and 32 bits, and that MS-W64 hasn't seen enough testing.
As for Cutler, it was repeatedly reported that his technical judgement is routinely overriden by backwards compatibility and marketing (read: proprietary lock-in) reasons.
And yes, I question your commitment to a technically inferior and proprietary technology with a bad track record. Seems like you are looking for technical excellence where there isn't to keep yourself from despairing at your daily job.
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The PowerBook Duo 2300 withe 603e and SCSI hard drive was a RISC SCSI portable.
Oh sweet...
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the machines that the Duke power workers had were lightening fast, even as compared to today's machines.
Well, they probably ran the Apple Mac OS (System) 7 or something, and this was a darned simple OS. Not nearly as good as POSIX, but fast.
But on the other hand, POSIX systems could be as fast as that if (1) there were optimised drivers for video and such as the Apple Mac OS had and has; and (2) we could 'buy' kernels optimised for specific systems as the Apple Mac OS had and has.
So blame proprietary lock-in -- and the loss of SCSI. Plus either our lack of knowledge and time to optimise our installations, or the overwhelming complexity of today's systems, or both.
>
Windows NT for Alpha was originally a 32bit OS because of the original Alpha limitations.
AFAIK the Alpha was always a 64-bits chip, with limitations being imposed by chipsets and the such. Thus GNU/Linux and others were always 64-bits capable even if the specific systems weren't. MS-WNT limitations were, so to speak, auto-imposed.
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the large array of available Alpha CPUS with backward compatibility for the earlier EV5 chips like the 21164PC that only supported 33bit addressing to the 21164PC which supported 43bit addressing.
Yet it never reached 64 bits -- why? Note you are citing the *PC parts.
BTW, I'd be glad to see references for these numbers. I never saw them and would like to discover more about them.
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if you think Microsoft has no knowledge of OS support beyond a 32bit platform, you know very little about the NT development on the Alpha platform
Yet never reaching 64 bits, which were supported by GNU/Linux and other Unices not only on the Alpha but shortly later on MIPS, UltraSPARC and POWER...
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especially the once upcoming Win2k that Compaq killed at RC1.
Compaq? This was a MS product! Compaq simply decided stopping to subsidise it, because MS wasn't living up to its side of the deal by (failing to) port its apps and tools
>
NT is just as extensible to the 64bit or even 128bit world as any OS around, the flaw is that people see the Win32 (note the 32 there) as the NT platform, when it is just the Controlling Subsystem of NT OS - but doesn't have to be.
Yet MS wants it to be, so that Cutler was cut short in his efforts
>
you will find that the Win32 API is being replaced with a new OS API model in the upcoming Longhorn and new MS Server technologies. They are also moving the UI from being 'bit' dependant.
Yet MS W32 will be supported for backwards compatibility -- and if history is any guide, it will draw enormous resources, delay the whole thing inimaginably, introduce lots of interoperability bugs and holes; while the new subsystem will be also much more complex than the open standards alternatives, and thus slower, buggier, unsafe.
Probably all this will be even more expensive too, because MS has to return to profitability before its competitive Doomsday -- be it open starndards and free software or the courts, both judiciary and of public opinion.
And compatibility will be less than perfect for third-party software that didn't have insider knowledge, thus killing a few more competitors.
So that in effect MS by killing the MS-DOS legacy in MS-WME is only gaining a short respite until the MS-W32 legacy support nightmare -- which labours it will cheerfully transfer to users.
>
the fact that MS has had a 64bit Shipping OS (WindowsXP 64bit Edition) for over two years should be enough of a sign that your original statement of MS having no experience in the 64bit OS world is truly ridiculous.
Don't be rediculous yourself. You know that MS -WXP supports only IPF, which hardly has any customers, much less MS users at that. And that MS quality is low enough that only high volume products see enough debugging.
Moreover, why except for proprietary lock-in to use a suboptimised OS? Even GNU/Linux is suboptimised on platforms other than IA-32, but not as ridiculously as MS-WNT.
Neither can I, that's why I wrote seems. At the very least it's a nice explanation as to why the man who made rock-solid OpenVMS failed to produce something decent at MS.
>
they were also not willing to pay a premium for DEC's legendary reliability engineering
But it wasn't DEC who needed to lower prices -- the clonemakers did that.
There were other problems playing here. Volumes were never big enough for the clonemakers to get real economies of scale, since MS failed to port anything but compilers and server software. No MS VB until near the end, no full MS Office (only MS Word and Excel), no 64 bits, no optimisation, no marketing or advertisement... this last was also a DEC failure.
DEC was also a victim of its emphasis on its proprietary VMS platform, even if it eventually produced a POSIX version (OpenVMS). GNU/Linux wasn't pushed as it should, nor was Digital Unix. Alternative sources of supply for the processors were also lacking.
All this and much else the like made Alpha machines successful products without a successful architecture ecosystem around it... kind of like Apple's predicament.
>
NEC released two notebooks with Alpha processors. They also had SCSI 2.5" drives
While these sound like having been nice systems, they weren't widely successfull because they used standard desktop Alphas. The notebook-specific version of the Alpha, geared towards low power consumption and cool running, never saw the light of the day.
I still regret not being able to buy a RISC SCSI portable.
Alphas weren't inherently expensive. Most were good servers and workstations, with special internal busses and memory interconnection; you paid for the whole system. The personal systems, such as the PWs, Multias and the clones, were actually good value and price.
By the time MS killed the MS-WNT port, and Compaq took over, there was a notebook part in the works, and the Samsung clones would help it gain volume and lower prices... Intel managed to kill everything just in time to avoid being trampled by superior tech.
And that brings the major limitation to market efficiency nowadays: lack of information of the market participants. Most people just believed Wintel FUD.
>
Microsoft learned a lot about making a 64 bit OS from it's Alpha experience.
Actually very little, the Alpha was killed before MS had anything more than a prototype. That work seems to have been mostly scrapped, as its leader Dave Custer wanted to break backwards compatibility to save MS-WNT from the big problems it still has.
>
Many see the next step in 64 bit Intel Chips as the EV8 come to life - with Intel spin.
Not at all. Intel would love us to think that, but the truth is that the EPIC and Alpha architectures are just too different to cross-polinate well. Intel will use some tricks, but most of Alpha's excellence is being lost; after all, the advantage of RISC in general, and Alpha in particular, is the simplicity it has over CISC (AMD64) and EPIC (IPF).
Anyway many engineers were already disgusted by Compaq and had left for many places, including AMD. Intel got only a remnant.
Re:SQL, XML not a Holy Grail: relational would be.
on
CNet on WinFS
·
· Score: 1
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Thanks for the reply.
You're welcome!
>
Your sig says your a DBA.
At least when I'm employed, which is not the case now... and to tell the truth, my last job wasn't as a DBA as well. But I am trying to return.
>
What's your prefered RDBMS software?
At the moment there are none. The best free SQL DBMS at the moment seems to be PostgreSQL, and the proprietary one IBM DB/2.
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We use MySQL/InnoDB, although that doesn't come across too favourably in some of the articles you point to (although for that matter, neither do any others...)
InnoDB is as good a DB engine as you could wish, but MySQL is a complete disaster. Seems like its SQL dialect is even less compliant than Oracle's; it is actually misnomed at that. In fact it is so bad that the upgrade path is SAPdb, which is at Oracle v7 level!
>
Are there any implementations that don't use SQL?
Yes, but none yet a full RDBMS.
Ingres, which used QUEL, isn't anymore maintained, and that's a big loss.
Alphora Dataphor is the one closest to the Holy Grail, but it is more of a rules engine that translates a proper relational language to SQL, thus precluding the proper otimisation. Moreoever, it is.Net. The authors are trying to port it either by Mono or by C recoding, but they haven't yet found their free software strategy. Couple it with IBM DB/2 or PostgreSQL on some kind of POSIX platform, and you're on to something.
Then there are incipient libraries like Opus, Duro... they are bound to eventually reach D compliance, be it D&D's Tutorial D, Alphora's Dataphor D4 compatibility or something else. But this will likely take years.
Why the author thinks web fora are better than mailing list is a mistery to me. None of the reasons he gave sticks, and I actually find them a pain. With a mailing list I can always use Gmane to get a nice news interface!
Slashdot Mirror
What's that? dict brings nothing.
Being non-standard isn't necessarily bad.
More to the point, SVG hasn't been taking over the Web. Maybe it has some inherent flaws? If so, could it be that WVG fixes some of them? Or would MS have some other plausible excuse to be only 90% compatible, other than proprietary lock-in?
On the other hand, will WVG be independently implementable, or will it be encumbered by patents, copyrights or something the like?
How exactly were Netscape, AltaVista or WordPerfect easier to use than their successors? Quite to the contrary.
Regarding InDesign, are you a prophet to tell Quark's doom, or do you have interesting insider information as to why Quark can't possibly leapfrog InDesign?
It was the other way round.
As usual, the ideal solution would be free firmware, but a big step forward would be the adoption of OpenFirmware, a Forth-based open standard already used in Alphas, Sparcs and Powers.
True enough. Free basic iTools service, the free upgrade to a stable version of Mac OS X, Mac OS X support for pre-G3 systems, and so on... I gave up one-&-a-half year and now am happily running Debian GNU/Linux on my iBooks.
I agree authority alone isn't enough a reason, and there must be a balance. But apart from inability to spell you haven't shown in what your unpreparedness consisted.
Which countries are missing from the UNO?
Actually mergers tend to diminish the competitiveness of the platform. Instead of two entities competing against each other, you have one only with a reassuring proprietary lock-in that tends to make them lazy. Not to mention that culture clashes tend to impair the ability to execute.
Now if they were migrating, as separate entities, to, say, the POWER architecture, they would loose lots of proprietary lock-in, but at least the whole platform would be more viable -- if migrating to something like POWER they could even merge that they still would have competition to keep them on their toes, and customers would have the reassurance of alternative sources of supply.
Sun has a proprietary lock-in with tons of Solaris SPARC applications on its customers.
Besides, if Sun just built IPF computers just as everyone does, it would be on its path to irrelevance, and this path is already leaded by Unisys. It would be very little to differentiate from Unisys, Dell and the such, and margins would suffer accordingly.
As it is, UltraSPARC systems are faster than Intel ones, even if processors are slower, simply because you can buy a system with lotsa processors, lotsa very fast memory to cache your database in, a great system bus and a stable, proven OS. AMD64 and IA-64 are just too recent, and there's just to much MS there.
I could see Sun migrating to, say, POWER. But even there the benefits would be doubtful. The real benefits would perhaps come from fully supporting GNU/Linux as an alternative on par with Solaris.
Yet the Fujitsu PrimePower web page says nothing about GNU/Linux. Perhaps it is a GNU/Linux strategy focusing on ignoring GNU/Linux, or even not existing at all?
Lame excuse. Why limit newer installations? It doesn't add up. References, please.
And yes, I know all these facts you cite. But you overlook my evaluations: that all non-x86 platform ports were suboptimised and 32 bits, and that MS-W64 hasn't seen enough testing.
As for Cutler, it was repeatedly reported that his technical judgement is routinely overriden by backwards compatibility and marketing (read: proprietary lock-in) reasons.
And yes, I question your commitment to a technically inferior and proprietary technology with a bad track record. Seems like you are looking for technical excellence where there isn't to keep yourself from despairing at your daily job.
Oh sweet...
Well, they probably ran the Apple Mac OS (System) 7 or something, and this was a darned simple OS. Not nearly as good as POSIX, but fast.
But on the other hand, POSIX systems could be as fast as that if (1) there were optimised drivers for video and such as the Apple Mac OS had and has; and (2) we could 'buy' kernels optimised for specific systems as the Apple Mac OS had and has.
So blame proprietary lock-in -- and the loss of SCSI. Plus either our lack of knowledge and time to optimise our installations, or the overwhelming complexity of today's systems, or both.
AFAIK the Alpha was always a 64-bits chip, with limitations being imposed by chipsets and the such. Thus GNU/Linux and others were always 64-bits capable even if the specific systems weren't. MS-WNT limitations were, so to speak, auto-imposed.
Yet it never reached 64 bits -- why? Note you are citing the *PC parts.
BTW, I'd be glad to see references for these numbers. I never saw them and would like to discover more about them.
Yet never reaching 64 bits, which were supported by GNU/Linux and other Unices not only on the Alpha but shortly later on MIPS, UltraSPARC and POWER...
Compaq? This was a MS product! Compaq simply decided stopping to subsidise it, because MS wasn't living up to its side of the deal by (failing to) port its apps and tools
Yet MS wants it to be, so that Cutler was cut short in his efforts
Yet MS W32 will be supported for backwards compatibility -- and if history is any guide, it will draw enormous resources, delay the whole thing inimaginably, introduce lots of interoperability bugs and holes; while the new subsystem will be also much more complex than the open standards alternatives, and thus slower, buggier, unsafe.
Probably all this will be even more expensive too, because MS has to return to profitability before its competitive Doomsday -- be it open starndards and free software or the courts, both judiciary and of public opinion.
And compatibility will be less than perfect for third-party software that didn't have insider knowledge, thus killing a few more competitors.
So that in effect MS by killing the MS-DOS legacy in MS-WME is only gaining a short respite until the MS-W32 legacy support nightmare -- which labours it will cheerfully transfer to users.
Don't be rediculous yourself. You know that MS -WXP supports only IPF, which hardly has any customers, much less MS users at that. And that MS quality is low enough that only high volume products see enough debugging.
Moreover, why except for proprietary lock-in to use a suboptimised OS? Even GNU/Linux is suboptimised on platforms other than IA-32, but not as ridiculously as MS-WNT.
Neither can I, that's why I wrote seems. At the very least it's a nice explanation as to why the man who made rock-solid OpenVMS failed to produce something decent at MS.
Thanks for the correction.
But it wasn't DEC who needed to lower prices -- the clonemakers did that.
There were other problems playing here. Volumes were never big enough for the clonemakers to get real economies of scale, since MS failed to port anything but compilers and server software. No MS VB until near the end, no full MS Office (only MS Word and Excel), no 64 bits, no optimisation, no marketing or advertisement... this last was also a DEC failure.
DEC was also a victim of its emphasis on its proprietary VMS platform, even if it eventually produced a POSIX version (OpenVMS). GNU/Linux wasn't pushed as it should, nor was Digital Unix. Alternative sources of supply for the processors were also lacking.
All this and much else the like made Alpha machines successful products without a successful architecture ecosystem around it... kind of like Apple's predicament.
No, you couldn't. The OS would only understand 32 bits addresses.
And pray how would you access them without subverting the OS?
There were, lotsa. That's why the Alpha found a market.
But on 32 bits... and slowly as it wasn't as optimised for the Alpha as it was for x86, nor as the Digital Unix was.
While these sound like having been nice systems, they weren't widely successfull because they used standard desktop Alphas. The notebook-specific version of the Alpha, geared towards low power consumption and cool running, never saw the light of the day.
I still regret not being able to buy a RISC SCSI portable.
We were talking 64 bits. MS-WNT on the Alpha was 32-bits only.
But then I should have been clearer. Writing only once, or even worse only quoting, makes for overlooking.
Alphas weren't inherently expensive. Most were good servers and workstations, with special internal busses and memory interconnection; you paid for the whole system. The personal systems, such as the PWs, Multias and the clones, were actually good value and price.
By the time MS killed the MS-WNT port, and Compaq took over, there was a notebook part in the works, and the Samsung clones would help it gain volume and lower prices... Intel managed to kill everything just in time to avoid being trampled by superior tech.
And that brings the major limitation to market efficiency nowadays: lack of information of the market participants. Most people just believed Wintel FUD.
Try Samsung or API.
Actually very little, the Alpha was killed before MS had anything more than a prototype. That work seems to have been mostly scrapped, as its leader Dave Custer wanted to break backwards compatibility to save MS-WNT from the big problems it still has.
Not at all. Intel would love us to think that, but the truth is that the EPIC and Alpha architectures are just too different to cross-polinate well. Intel will use some tricks, but most of Alpha's excellence is being lost; after all, the advantage of RISC in general, and Alpha in particular, is the simplicity it has over CISC (AMD64) and EPIC (IPF).
Anyway many engineers were already disgusted by Compaq and had left for many places, including AMD. Intel got only a remnant.
You're welcome!
At least when I'm employed, which is not the case now... and to tell the truth, my last job wasn't as a DBA as well. But I am trying to return.
At the moment there are none. The best free SQL DBMS at the moment seems to be PostgreSQL, and the proprietary one IBM DB/2.
InnoDB is as good a DB engine as you could wish, but MySQL is a complete disaster. Seems like its SQL dialect is even less compliant than Oracle's; it is actually misnomed at that. In fact it is so bad that the upgrade path is SAPdb, which is at Oracle v7 level!
Yes, but none yet a full RDBMS.
Ingres, which used QUEL, isn't anymore maintained, and that's a big loss.
Alphora Dataphor is the one closest to the Holy Grail, but it is more of a rules engine that translates a proper relational language to SQL, thus precluding the proper otimisation. Moreoever, it is .Net. The authors are trying to port it either by Mono or by C recoding, but they haven't yet found their free software strategy. Couple it with IBM DB/2 or PostgreSQL on some kind of POSIX platform, and you're on to something.
Then there are incipient libraries like Opus, Duro... they are bound to eventually reach D compliance, be it D&D's Tutorial D, Alphora's Dataphor D4 compatibility or something else. But this will likely take years.
Why the author thinks web fora are better than mailing list is a mistery to me. None of the reasons he gave sticks, and I actually find them a pain. With a mailing list I can always use Gmane to get a nice news interface!
Why?