You have no concept of how broad the computer hardware and software market is. Apple does not make "high-end hardware". Not even mid-range, although that could change with Mac OS X.
I fell behind in my studies and dropped out of the Univ of Minnesota in '92 after ~2 years of CSci. I worked up from the bottom of IT - junior operations. 2 jobs and 5 years later, I got a programming job, and that was because my friend's father ran the shop. I got lucky. I now work for a Fortune 500 software company making good money.
The market has changed since I dropped out. You may be able to get an entry level job in software development with only 2 years school. It will be hard, and it may not be your first job..or your second.
I've worked for 2 software companies: a start-up with 30 people and an established enterprise class software corp with more than 7000 people. Neither company would even consider someone without a degree or experience.
Finishing the degree is what you will wish you had done when you turn 30. I sure do.
Usually the cases were reclaimed for scrap if you can believe it. I saw it happen to a just decommissioned X-MP in 1996. epaulson is right, the X-MP is not comfortable. The "couch" around it is steel and fiberglass, not padded.
You are thinking of the Cray-1. It actually had its cooling pipes under a bench covered with padded naugahide. The story is that when someone suggested leather to Seymore, he replied to the effect "This computer isn't worth killing a cow over."
They bought them to acquire some patents and interconnect technologies. On the high-end SGI Origin2000 the CPUs are connected by a high speed interconnect dubbed "CrayLink".
They also got a hell of a good distributed storage management/migration system. This allows files that have not been accessed for a while to automatically be migrated from disk to tape. When the user opens the file, it is silently migrated back to disk without the user noticing (except for the latency). Works best with robotic tape systems such as STK.
However, the apparent reason that SGI bought CRI was to eliminate the competition. Any customer requests for Cray systems were diverted by SGI sales over to Origin2000 systems. A customer had to try real hard to get a Cray. "No, I don't want the O2000, I really would prefer a T3E!"
The T3E is a spectacular machine. It uses hundreds or thousands the very powerful Alpha chips with nearly linear scalability. The J90 & SV1 are a commercially successful line of systems that meet the needs of many customers. There is still life in these two architectures for sure.
Tera is getting one of these lines. The T90/J90/SV1/SV2 line of vector computers.
Tera is not trying to eliminate the competition as SGI did. Tera needs the name recognition and for their sake, they must also realize that Tera needs to adopt the pioneering culture that is still associated with everything Cray. So far, Tera has not done anything that makes us stand up and say "Wow!".
Tera has interesting technology in the works, their "Multithreaded Architecture (MTA)". They have produced some very promising benchmarks (who hasn't). I just hope that they realize the great opportunity afforded them by purchasing the Cray name and get some genuine innovation going. They could also use a colorful spokesman, just make sure that he/she is second to the technology.
CRI's CS6400 was not a storage system. It was an (up to) 64 CPU MPP system that used Sparc chips. CRI sold this technology to Sun when SGI aquired CRI. This was because the CS6400 directly competed with SGI's new Origin2000 line.
Sun was the natural buyer. Sun turned it into their E10000 computer which was/is very powerful and often used as a database server or a transaction server. Check out the list of supercomputer sites and you will see it promenantly displayed.
There was a J90 based desktop that fit into a double hight pizza box case. It was produced for the military. One CPU and a Florinert->heatsink->fan heat exchange unit. Very cool! (hot?)
Sarcasm is a horrible way to tell others your opinion. In a global net, it is likely to not be recognized as sarcasm by a very large number of people. Lastly, when you do use sarcasm, make it good and make it funny.
FPS games "train" you how to fight and kill. Sims "train" you how to direct others to fight and kill. You still need a crazy or two under your command to do the wet work.
Still, I do not understand those that believe FPS games teach people to be homicidal.
A whole bunch of Y-MPs used florinert. For this guy's sake, I hope he got a Y-MP EL. That is the only one that he could hope to get running in his garage without spending a fortune on infrastructure. The EL was labeled a "departmental supercomputer". You could plug it into a 220V socket and it had enough fans to cool the system boards. For you Crayons out there, you may remember the marketing department's nickname for the Y-MP EL - "dime bag". Heh.
There is only one way to get me to pay for information.
First, I need to be able to perform a boolean logic query of the database of past answers. If my query returns nothing, then I need to be allowed to post a question with a guarantee of a response within a timeframe that I select.
Next, you have to make me pay before I read the information. It may be unethical, but I will not pay after I have read the info. Therefore, to get me to pay, I *need* to know that the content is pertinant and valuable to me. That only comes from me trusting the content provider for quality.
A service like this is possible, but building trust in the quality of content is the hardest part.
Check out http://www.gapcon.com/listg.html This list of the top supercomputer sites is as close as you can get to up-to-date and authoritative in that field.
You will notice that there are no Linux installations in that list. Linux on a supercomputer has not been proven to be viable for the highest end systems yet. What happens if SGI fails to deliver? The box may be installed, it may boot, but what happens to Linux's reputation if the system can't fulfill it's mission.
Also, keep in mind that SGI does need some good press. You could say that they are desperate for good press right now.
Yes there will be hard and soft faults in a large experimental system. That is understood by you and me and SGI and the customer. You don't push the limits with a tried and true platform. You push the envelope when you first try a technology.
SGI will likely be able to bring redundant processors and subsystems online (hotswapable) as needed. Software becomes stable over time on these types of systems. The key is that SGI support will have access to all source whenever they need it.
Regarding the Sony naming convention, note that Sony's founder is named Akio Morita. He died on October 3, 1999. He was highly regarded and loved by those at Sony. Naming their robot companion "Aibo" would seem to be in reverence to their corporate father. Just guessing.
The name Sony itself is derived from a latin root for sound. They do indeed seem to create a sense of meaning in their choice of names.
I just walked into a FranklinCovey store yesterday (Monday Oct 4.) I asked for a Palm V and they wondered if I wanted a Palm Vx. I told them that there was no such thing. Fortunately for me the sales person was quite pushy. As soon as I realized that they really *did* have an 8MB Palm V, I snatched it up as quick as you can say "bragging rights." I have been just so lucky these days...
Slashdot Mirror
You used to be able to find one at www.inpace.com but the server seems to be down or gone.
You have no concept of how broad the computer hardware and software market is. Apple does not make "high-end hardware". Not even mid-range, although that could change with Mac OS X.
I fell behind in my studies and dropped out of the Univ of Minnesota in '92 after ~2 years of CSci. I worked up from the bottom of IT - junior operations. 2 jobs and 5 years later, I got a programming job, and that was because my friend's father ran the shop. I got lucky. I now work for a Fortune 500 software company making good money.
The market has changed since I dropped out. You may be able to get an entry level job in software development with only 2 years school. It will be hard, and it may not be your first job..or your second.
I've worked for 2 software companies: a start-up with 30 people and an established enterprise class software corp with more than 7000 people. Neither company would even consider someone without a degree or experience.
Finishing the degree is what you will wish you had done when you turn 30. I sure do.
Thanks for the post, AC. It's great to see perspectives from both sides of the line.
Yeah, I agree, big deal. Except when you consider that other Unix vendors do not have this feature and that IBM isn't licensing the technology.
Hear, hear. An accurate assessment Maledictus.
I got some SGI stock a couple years ago at a value price of $15. Two months later it went up to $30. I held it. Sigh.
Usually the cases were reclaimed for scrap if you can believe it. I saw it happen to a just decommissioned X-MP in 1996. epaulson is right, the X-MP is not comfortable. The "couch" around it is steel and fiberglass, not padded.
You are thinking of the Cray-1. It actually had its cooling pipes under a bench covered with padded naugahide. The story is that when someone suggested leather to Seymore, he replied to the effect "This computer isn't worth killing a cow over."
SGI gutted Cray Research.
They bought them to acquire some patents and interconnect technologies. On the high-end SGI Origin2000 the CPUs are connected by a high speed interconnect dubbed "CrayLink".
They also got a hell of a good distributed storage management/migration system. This allows files that have not been accessed for a while to automatically be migrated from disk to tape. When the user opens the file, it is silently migrated back to disk without the user noticing (except for the latency). Works best with robotic tape systems such as STK.
However, the apparent reason that SGI bought CRI was to eliminate the competition. Any customer requests for Cray systems were diverted by SGI sales over to Origin2000 systems. A customer had to try real hard to get a Cray. "No, I don't want the O2000, I really would prefer a T3E!"
The T3E is a spectacular machine. It uses hundreds or thousands the very powerful Alpha chips with nearly linear scalability. The J90 & SV1 are a commercially successful line of systems that meet the needs of many customers. There is still life in these two architectures for sure.
Tera is getting one of these lines. The T90/J90/SV1/SV2 line of vector computers.
Tera is not trying to eliminate the competition as SGI did. Tera needs the name recognition and for their sake, they must also realize that Tera needs to adopt the pioneering culture that is still associated with everything Cray. So far, Tera has not done anything that makes us stand up and say "Wow!".
Tera has interesting technology in the works, their "Multithreaded Architecture (MTA)". They have produced some very promising benchmarks (who hasn't). I just hope that they realize the great opportunity afforded them by purchasing the Cray name and get some genuine innovation going. They could also use a colorful spokesman, just make sure that he/she is second to the technology.
CRI's CS6400 was not a storage system. It was an (up to) 64 CPU MPP system that used Sparc chips. CRI sold this technology to Sun when SGI aquired CRI. This was because the CS6400 directly competed with SGI's new Origin2000 line.
Sun was the natural buyer. Sun turned it into their E10000 computer which was/is very powerful and often used as a database server or a transaction server. Check out the list of supercomputer sites and you will see it promenantly displayed.
There was a J90 based desktop that fit into a double hight pizza box case. It was produced for the military. One CPU and a Florinert->heatsink->fan heat exchange unit. Very cool! (hot?)
God forbid that Science Fiction be funny!
Even the NSA needs to do public relations. You checked their site, didn't you?
Your post deserves to be a full story on slashdot.
Redundant on post number 1? Redundant? Said before?
Ummm, maybe redundant should not be an option for moderating post 1, ya think?
Sarcasm is a horrible way to tell others your opinion. In a global net, it is likely to not be recognized as sarcasm by a very large number of people. Lastly, when you do use sarcasm, make it good and make it funny.
Read above, not all of the source was released. I would presume that you are not to reverse engineer binaries for which source was not released.
Beware the corporate stooges among us...
Busted. No one said his name was Rush. :) Too bad for you that the conservatives are so fractured this campaign season.
FPS games "train" you how to fight and kill. Sims "train" you how to direct others to fight and kill. You still need a crazy or two under your command to do the wet work.
Still, I do not understand those that believe FPS games teach people to be homicidal.
A whole bunch of Y-MPs used florinert. For this guy's sake, I hope he got a Y-MP EL. That is the only one that he could hope to get running in his garage without spending a fortune on infrastructure. The EL was labeled a "departmental supercomputer". You could plug it into a 220V socket and it had enough fans to cool the system boards. For you Crayons out there, you may remember the marketing department's nickname for the Y-MP EL - "dime bag". Heh.
There is only one way to get me to pay for information.
First, I need to be able to perform a boolean logic query of the database of past answers. If my query returns nothing, then I need to be allowed to post a question with a guarantee of a response within a timeframe that I select.
Next, you have to make me pay before I read the information. It may be unethical, but I will not pay after I have read the info. Therefore, to get me to pay, I *need* to know that the content is pertinant and valuable to me. That only comes from me trusting the content provider for quality.
A service like this is possible, but building trust in the quality of content is the hardest part.
Check out http://www.gapcon.com/listg.html
This list of the top supercomputer sites is as close as you can get to up-to-date and authoritative in that field.
You will notice that there are no Linux installations in that list. Linux on a supercomputer has not been proven to be viable for the highest end systems yet. What happens if SGI fails to deliver? The box may be installed, it may boot, but what happens to Linux's reputation if the system can't fulfill it's mission.
Also, keep in mind that SGI does need some good press. You could say that they are desperate for good press right now.
Yes there will be hard and soft faults in a large experimental system. That is understood by you and me and SGI and the customer. You don't push the limits with a tried and true platform. You push the envelope when you first try a technology.
SGI will likely be able to bring redundant processors and subsystems online (hotswapable) as needed. Software becomes stable over time on these types of systems. The key is that SGI support will have access to all source whenever they need it.
Regarding the Sony naming convention, note that Sony's founder is named Akio Morita. He died on October 3, 1999. He was highly regarded and loved by those at Sony. Naming their robot companion "Aibo" would seem to be in reverence to their corporate father. Just guessing.
The name Sony itself is derived from a latin root for sound. They do indeed seem to create a sense of meaning in their choice of names.
I just walked into a FranklinCovey store yesterday (Monday Oct 4.) I asked for a Palm V and they wondered if I wanted a Palm Vx. I told them that there was no such thing. Fortunately for me the sales person was quite pushy. As soon as I realized that they really *did* have an 8MB Palm V, I snatched it up as quick as you can say "bragging rights." I have been just so lucky these days...