As I recall, one of the tasks given to Nedry in the design of the computer systems was to devise a database capable of holding a couple of billion fields to handle the sequencing of DNA strands.
There was a lot more to it than this. AT&T was prohibited from being in certain markets (computers) because of the "regulated monopoly" status. They had fantastic technology available via Bell Labs, but they couldn't sell it directly. They also had UNIX. They owned it. But they couldn't make money off it.
The government wouldn't let AT&T sell computers because it was believed they would have an unfair advantage in the marketplace if they controlled everything from end to end. They could make their computers work better or cheaper on their networks. Few people remember now how much it used to cost to connect a third party modem to a Bell phone line. But you could rent a modem from Bell that would plug right in! And then you'd pay, and pay, and pay rent forever.
The management of AT&T decided it was better for the company to be broken up so they could get the new entities into markets they thought would make them more money than just carrying traffic. At that time, the small computer industry was beginning to take off, and they wanted a piece of that. They wanted to take on IBM, and even without the local providers, they were still about the only company large enough to succeed.
This isn't about technology, or customer service, it's about BUSINESS. Everyone who owned AT&T stock got shares in all of the new entities, and the idea was that the new entities, moving into new markets, could make more revenue combined than the old monolith. That translates into higher overall dividends, and higher aggregate share prices.
It's all about "maximizing shareholder value".
Sometimes in business, you have to think about what your company can be, rather than what it IS. If the railroads had thought this way, they could have been the first into the airline business, but they thought of themselves as RAILROADS, and not as "transportation providers", and by the time they realized what was happening, it was too late.
The management of AT&T tried to branch out, to get into the game, but unfortunately nobody thought of them as a computer company. They didn't discover how to properly market their new products till they were outclassed by the other players. Their early UNIX boxes were good products that just never sold well.
I bought a Treo on the used market a few years back. Verizon won't activate a data-capable phone unless you buy a data plan. That's just how they work. If you try to switch from a standard phone to a smartphone via the web site, it'll tell you to call customer service, and they will tell you you HAVE to buy the data plan. No alternative.
You can get new Model M keyboards from Unicomp at www.pckeyboards.com, and there was another outfit selling used model M's too, but I lost the link. Unicomp used to advertise refurbishing of Model M's on their web site, but that seems to be gone now. I had asked the other outfit if they could refurbish a couple of my old Model M's, and they declined, but they did say Unicomp would still do it if you called them. This was a while ago, and I don't know if they still do it. My last Model M is still going, I guess if it breaks, I'll have to buy a Unicomp.
IBM innovates more than just about anyone, but most of it is behind the scenes. How about GMR disk technology, for one? Before that, a terrabyte took up a whole room. Now it sits in your hand. Never mind a lot of memory and CPU tech. Problem with IBM is, since it's the biggest of the behemoths, it can be hard to look below the layers of marketing and management to see the cool stuff going on. The startups get a lot of press because they're trying to be seen. That raises capital. The bigger companies with established capital keep their innovations close to the vest till they're ready to exploit. That way, even if they have to share them with others, they still have a bit of a head start.
I worked on these way back when. I'm surprised it still works. I agree with the above, you have two options:
1) tar up the whole filesystem (if it will fit), and use uucp to move it via serial port. Make a null-modem cable and ship it across. Be careful to get the flow control right. Some of the old machines had serial ports that couldn't keep up with 9600 baud, so needed RTS/CTS or DTR flow control to avoid overruns.
2) It should have the ability to make FAT format floppies. Do it piecemeal, if you can find a 1.2 MB 5-1/4 drive for a PC anymore.
The filesystem is XENIX format, not FAT. If I recall, it's similar to the original SVRX filesystem. It MIGHT mount under Linux, but I'd be more afraid of an incompatible controller frying the drive. I don't recall these machines used IDE, I could have sworn they predate IDE, and the drive would have been either the old Shugart interface, or some kind of SCSI. The Altos machines I used had either a 10MB or 40 MB Shugart, and those were the BIG sealed units. IDE didn't come in till 3-1/2" drives, and I believe the later Altos machines had at best 5-1/4 drives either ESDI or SCSI.
My Verizon contract was up, and my family needed new phones. We ended up with 4 Android phones, 3 HTC Eris's, and a Droid. Verizon sold a LOAD of them over the holiday season, mostly due to rebates and discounts. The 4 phones, normally over $600 even with a contract, ended up costing me $200.
The first reseller we went to (after they were very helpful during our selection process) had run out by the week before Christmas, and had to send us to a Verizon store. They had plenty, and they were going out the door fast.
I agree that will probably be the case, but when/if it happens it will be a BIG hit for them, it's not just that coaster, it's the whole area, including the Spiderman ride, which is pretty much tied to the franchise. That and the Hulk are big draws, at least till the Harry Potter area opens next year.
Hopefully the contract is good for a while. It's fun there, I'd hate to see it torn up just because of licensing issues.
Wonder how this will affect the licensing for the Comic Book area at Universal Orlando long term. It's ALL Marvel, including the "Hulk" roller coaster.
I suppose it'll just continue for a while though, the whole thing is pretty incestous.
There are, IBM runs one. It's their current way of getting new users into zSeries, but as I said, there aren't a lot of new workloads going onto zSeries, other than Linux. People write software for the platform they know and have access to. When I was in college, there were only mainframes, and that's what they taught. Colleges reduced costs by going to smaller computers as they became more powerful, and to UNIX since it was "free". DOS and Windows became ubiquitous. That's where development moved to. The idea that mainframes were "obsolete" came out of that.
It's sort of funny that you can run the current versions of zOS and zVM in less memory than you need for Windows. MVS used to be considered a horrendous pig, but compared to current OS's, it's relatively lean.
Actually, they do. Or they did, at least. It used to be called "IBM eServer, zSeries, or something like that. The current marketing calls it "System z". Any way you cut it, it's a big "application server". That's the terminology in vogue these days.
I went from UNIX in the late 1970's to mainframe zOS (MVS/OS) to VM and Linux on the mainframe. Anything you can do on an Intel box (or a room full of them), you can do on a mainframe, cheaper and more reliably, once you get past the first big financial hit. I've seen the so-called cost studies that supposedly show the room full of Intel white boxes are cheaper. Once you factor in the "unseen" costs, like the article says, and get past the startup, the mainframe looks VERY good.
Current mainframes aren't what people remember from the past. They're (physically) small, agile, and well suited to certain workloads (can you do 256 concurrent DMA transfers on an Intel box?). The problem is, the only companies that seem to be able to justify them for new workloads are ones that already have them for legacy work. IBM hasn't shown much interest in the low-end of the market (sell small boxen, then discontinue them, push licensed emulation, then kill it, etc).
Our biggest problem is finding people who know the technologies. I give classes to our Linux SA's on this, and they're usually surprised at what the current zSeries boxes can do.
Don't misunderstand, there are plenty of applications where Intel boxes make sense, I work both sides of the fence. I just hate to see mainframes maligned as "obsolete" by people who don't understand what they are now.
How about doing this the week before Christmas, with the flu and 104 fever, debugging assembler code, on the customer's machine, with a printer that took an hour to generate a listing?
Fortunately, the customer was very understanding, but I probably gave everyone in the office the flu. Not to mention their families, since I was invited to their Christmas party the morning I left.
This is a good point, but more relevant to what we do: Run Linux built for the zSeries architecture under zVM. The differences are minimal, nearly every Linux package runs fine when recompiled, and we've done two full processor replacements totally transparently to the users.
I've seen reports of people trying this using QEMU under zSeries Linux, under zVM. Wouldn't surprise me if that's about all the Mantissa product is: Something like QEMU natively compiled under CMS.
Since it's emulation, and zVM isn't really designed for CPU-intensive tasks (like emulation), and the instruction sets are so different, the performance was hideous. Like 12 hours to install Windows XP, or somesuch.
The funny part is that (very deep) under the covers, the zSeries processor is a modified PowerPC running microcode. I think I'll wait for IBM to develop x86 microcode so one of those new "special purpose engines" they're selling can run Windows "natively". THEN, with zVM as a simple resource manager, you might have something that's useful.
Anyone else feel like Stephenson is channeling James Michener? The only novel of his I've read all the way through was "Space", but I'm told his others are about the same. Overlong, full of alternate-universe-history, bogus technology, confusing characters, pages and pages of pointless exposition, and lackluster ending.
I did enjoy "Cryptonomicon", but I felt like I was reading "Space" again, and the dozen or so pages describing the preparation and consumption of Captain Crunch cereal just convinced me the man is being paid by the word.
Knowing the way politicians think, the obvious candidate would be the recently retired, and possibly available, Bill Gates. I can't think of anyone I'd like to see less though. Anyone know if Obama &co are clued in on techie issues?
I have DirecTV, and two Direct-Tivo boxes, both SD. I'd love to go to HD, but I don't want their DVR. When we moved recently, my wife had a conversation with the CSR about it, and they offered an upgrade to an HD DVR. She turned it down, preferring to stick with her Tivo, and the CSR replied that not only was that the prevailing opinion, but he himself was sticking with his Tivo over their in-house DVR. Several of my friends have tried the DirecTV DVR, and found it to be slower (even slower than the Tivo), and harder to use, with fewer features, and a terrible program guide. I hope they wake up soon. I'm stuck with satellite in my new house, but my new TVs are HD, and it's a shame to waste their capability.
I had one, and it got kicked around so much, it became unplayable. I was in a CompUSA one day, quite a few years after the original release, and they had a few, so I grabbed another. *I* think the music is very good. My son even played it on his college radio show.
Many many years ago, the president of the Solo Cup Company (they make paper cups and plates) had a wife who had aspirations as a singer. She wasn't very good, but he tried to jump start her career by including copies of her records in packages of his paper cups. I think I still have some of them. Wouldn't surprise me if they were collector's items now.
Somewhat fewer years ago, Wordperfect gave away a demo CD with a demo version of Wordperfect 6.0, and the rest of the CD filled with original music.
Musicians give music away all the time. Did the music industry scream over either of these? No. Then why over this? Because Prince's music sells, and the others really didn't.
Real musicians see music as an expression of art. They make it for their own purposes, and they'd do it even if they didn't get paid (as long as they can eat). I know plenty of indie bands that are happy to "cover their expenses". The music INDUSTRY, OTOH, sees music as a commodity to be sold, like soap. If someone gives away free soap, then real soap makers sell less, and they lose money.
This perception is wrong-headed, but everyone is listening to the wrong people, with the wrong point of view. The sooner we give music back to real musicians, the better.
A number of years ago, I was responsible for handling software problem reports for a couple of vendors ATM machines. (We were a third-party service company.)
The things that went wrong with ATMs were both funny and scary. I have no reason to believe things have changed. The banks and manufacturers go to great lengths to satisfy customers without letting details of the problems get out, because this would undermine confidence in the devices.
With ATMs, if you're smart, you have a slip of paper to verify a transaction. If there's a dispute with the bank, the bank will usually honor the paper documentation, and the customer has no reason to make an issue of the problem.
With voting, there's no going back and fixing results after the fact. Often there's no piece of paper. And on top of that, the whole process is under fairly intense public and governmental scrutiny.
So I wouldn't say there are less problems with ATMs. You just don't hear about them.
This is sort of what we've been looking at for a while. We have a Linux grid, and there's a project now to hook our mainframe, running Linux, into it. The work units are all Java, so the biggest headache has been to get the vendors to port the parts of the management software that are in C.
These features have been in the IBM mainframes for 15 years. I haven't seen a hardware failure take down a zSeries box in over ten.
On a somewhat related note, I wonder how much more floor space those 200 servers take up, and how much cooling they consume, compared to an IBM z9. It's about the size of a large refrigerator. Unless they're using blades, we're talking maybe 10x the floor space.
Automatic mirror. Goes dark when headlights shine into it. My Honda has one, except the little light is green. Not complicated, and lots better than having to flip that switch up and down while you're driving in a rural area.
Slashdot Mirror
As I recall, one of the tasks given to Nedry in the design of the computer systems was to devise a database capable of holding a couple of billion fields to handle the sequencing of DNA strands.
You give them the MEID, and they look it up. They know. The web site won't activate a smartphone. It knows too.
There was a lot more to it than this. AT&T was prohibited from being in certain markets (computers) because of the "regulated monopoly" status. They had fantastic technology available via Bell Labs, but they couldn't sell it directly. They also had UNIX. They owned it. But they couldn't make money off it.
The government wouldn't let AT&T sell computers because it was believed they would have an unfair advantage in the marketplace if they controlled everything from end to end. They could make their computers work better or cheaper on their networks. Few people remember now how much it used to cost to connect a third party modem to a Bell phone line. But you could rent a modem from Bell that would plug right in! And then you'd pay, and pay, and pay rent forever.
The management of AT&T decided it was better for the company to be broken up so they could get the new entities into markets they thought would make them more money than just carrying traffic. At that time, the small computer industry was beginning to take off, and they wanted a piece of that. They wanted to take on IBM, and even without the local providers, they were still about the only company large enough to succeed.
This isn't about technology, or customer service, it's about BUSINESS. Everyone who owned AT&T stock got shares in all of the new entities, and the idea was that the new entities, moving into new markets, could make more revenue combined than the old monolith. That translates into higher overall dividends, and higher aggregate share prices.
It's all about "maximizing shareholder value".
Sometimes in business, you have to think about what your company can be, rather than what it IS. If the railroads had thought this way, they could have been the first into the airline business, but they thought of themselves as RAILROADS, and not as "transportation providers", and by the time they realized what was happening, it was too late.
The management of AT&T tried to branch out, to get into the game, but unfortunately nobody thought of them as a computer company. They didn't discover how to properly market their new products till they were outclassed by the other players. Their early UNIX boxes were good products that just never sold well.
I bought a Treo on the used market a few years back. Verizon won't activate a data-capable phone unless you buy a data plan. That's just how they work. If you try to switch from a standard phone to a smartphone via the web site, it'll tell you to call customer service, and they will tell you you HAVE to buy the data plan. No alternative.
You can get new Model M keyboards from Unicomp at www.pckeyboards.com, and there was another outfit selling used model M's too, but I lost the link. Unicomp used to advertise refurbishing of Model M's on their web site, but that seems to be gone now. I had asked the other outfit if they could refurbish a couple of my old Model M's, and they declined, but they did say Unicomp would still do it if you called them. This was a while ago, and I don't know if they still do it. My last Model M is still going, I guess if it breaks, I'll have to buy a Unicomp.
IBM innovates more than just about anyone, but most of it is behind the scenes. How about GMR disk technology, for one? Before that, a terrabyte took up a whole room. Now it sits in your hand. Never mind a lot of memory and CPU tech. Problem with IBM is, since it's the biggest of the behemoths, it can be hard to look below the layers of marketing and management to see the cool stuff going on. The startups get a lot of press because they're trying to be seen. That raises capital. The bigger companies with established capital keep their innovations close to the vest till they're ready to exploit. That way, even if they have to share them with others, they still have a bit of a head start.
I worked on these way back when. I'm surprised it still works. I agree with the above, you have two options:
1) tar up the whole filesystem (if it will fit), and use uucp to move it via serial port. Make a null-modem cable and ship it across. Be careful to get the flow control right. Some of the old machines had serial ports that couldn't keep up with 9600 baud, so needed RTS/CTS or DTR flow control to avoid overruns.
2) It should have the ability to make FAT format floppies. Do it piecemeal, if you can find a 1.2 MB 5-1/4 drive for a PC anymore.
The filesystem is XENIX format, not FAT. If I recall, it's similar to the original SVRX filesystem. It MIGHT mount under Linux, but I'd be more afraid of an incompatible controller frying the drive. I don't recall these machines used IDE, I could have sworn they predate IDE, and the drive would have been either the old Shugart interface, or some kind of SCSI. The Altos machines I used had either a 10MB or 40 MB Shugart, and those were the BIG sealed units. IDE didn't come in till 3-1/2" drives, and I believe the later Altos machines had at best 5-1/4 drives either ESDI or SCSI.
My Verizon contract was up, and my family needed new phones. We ended up with 4 Android phones, 3 HTC Eris's, and a Droid. Verizon sold a LOAD of them over the holiday season, mostly due to rebates and discounts. The 4 phones, normally over $600 even with a contract, ended up costing me $200.
The first reseller we went to (after they were very helpful during our selection process) had run out by the week before Christmas, and had to send us to a Verizon store. They had plenty, and they were going out the door fast.
I agree that will probably be the case, but when/if it happens it will be a BIG hit for them, it's not just that coaster, it's the whole area, including the Spiderman ride, which is pretty much tied to the franchise. That and the Hulk are big draws, at least till the Harry Potter area opens next year.
Hopefully the contract is good for a while. It's fun there, I'd hate to see it torn up just because of licensing issues.
Wonder how this will affect the licensing for the Comic Book area at Universal Orlando long term. It's ALL Marvel, including the "Hulk" roller coaster.
I suppose it'll just continue for a while though, the whole thing is pretty incestous.
There are, IBM runs one. It's their current way of getting new users into zSeries, but as I said, there aren't a lot of new workloads going onto zSeries, other than Linux. People write software for the platform they know and have access to. When I was in college, there were only mainframes, and that's what they taught. Colleges reduced costs by going to smaller computers as they became more powerful, and to UNIX since it was "free". DOS and Windows became ubiquitous. That's where development moved to. The idea that mainframes were "obsolete" came out of that.
It's sort of funny that you can run the current versions of zOS and zVM in less memory than you need for Windows. MVS used to be considered a horrendous pig, but compared to current OS's, it's relatively lean.
Actually, they do. Or they did, at least. It used to be called "IBM eServer, zSeries, or something like that. The current marketing calls it "System z". Any way you cut it, it's a big "application server". That's the terminology in vogue these days.
I went from UNIX in the late 1970's to mainframe zOS (MVS/OS) to VM and Linux on the mainframe. Anything you can do on an Intel box (or a room full of them), you can do on a mainframe, cheaper and more reliably, once you get past the first big financial hit. I've seen the so-called cost studies that supposedly show the room full of Intel white boxes are cheaper. Once you factor in the "unseen" costs, like the article says, and get past the startup, the mainframe looks VERY good.
Current mainframes aren't what people remember from the past. They're (physically) small, agile, and well suited to certain workloads (can you do 256 concurrent DMA transfers on an Intel box?). The problem is, the only companies that seem to be able to justify them for new workloads are ones that already have them for legacy work. IBM hasn't shown much interest in the low-end of the market (sell small boxen, then discontinue them, push licensed emulation, then kill it, etc).
Our biggest problem is finding people who know the technologies. I give classes to our Linux SA's on this, and they're usually surprised at what the current zSeries boxes can do.
Don't misunderstand, there are plenty of applications where Intel boxes make sense, I work both sides of the fence. I just hate to see mainframes maligned as "obsolete" by people who don't understand what they are now.
How about doing this the week before Christmas, with the flu and 104 fever, debugging assembler code, on the customer's machine, with a printer that took an hour to generate a listing?
Fortunately, the customer was very understanding, but I probably gave everyone in the office the flu. Not to mention their families, since I was invited to their Christmas party the morning I left.
This is a good point, but more relevant to what we do: Run Linux built for the zSeries architecture under zVM. The differences are minimal, nearly
every Linux package runs fine when recompiled, and we've done two full processor replacements totally transparently to the users.
Try that with an ESX cluster.
I've seen reports of people trying this using QEMU under zSeries Linux, under zVM. Wouldn't surprise me if that's about all the Mantissa product is:
Something like QEMU natively compiled under CMS.
Since it's emulation, and zVM isn't really designed for CPU-intensive tasks (like emulation), and the instruction sets are so different,
the performance was hideous. Like 12 hours to install Windows XP, or somesuch.
The funny part is that (very deep) under the covers, the zSeries processor is a modified PowerPC running microcode. I think I'll wait for IBM
to develop x86 microcode so one of those new "special purpose engines" they're selling can run Windows "natively". THEN, with zVM as a simple
resource manager, you might have something that's useful.
Anyone else feel like Stephenson is channeling James Michener? The only novel of his I've read all the way through was "Space", but I'm told his others are about the same. Overlong, full of alternate-universe-history, bogus technology, confusing characters, pages and pages of pointless exposition, and lackluster ending.
I did enjoy "Cryptonomicon", but I felt like I was reading "Space" again, and the dozen or so pages describing the preparation and consumption of Captain Crunch cereal just convinced me the man is being paid by the word.
Knowing the way politicians think, the obvious candidate would be the recently retired, and possibly available, Bill Gates. I can't think of anyone I'd like to see less though. Anyone know if Obama &co are clued in on techie issues?
I have DirecTV, and two Direct-Tivo boxes, both SD. I'd love to go to HD, but I don't want their DVR. When we moved recently, my wife had a conversation with the CSR about it, and they offered an upgrade to an HD DVR. She turned it down, preferring to stick with her Tivo, and the CSR replied that not only was that the prevailing opinion, but he himself was sticking with his Tivo over their in-house DVR. Several of my friends have tried the DirecTV DVR, and found it to be slower (even slower than the Tivo), and harder to use, with fewer features, and a terrible program guide. I hope they wake up soon. I'm stuck with satellite in my new house, but my new TVs are HD, and it's a shame to waste their capability.
I had one, and it got kicked around so much, it became unplayable. I was in a CompUSA one day, quite a few years after the original release, and they had a few, so I grabbed another. *I* think the music is very good. My son even played it on his college radio show.
Many many years ago, the president of the Solo Cup Company (they make paper cups and plates) had a wife who had aspirations as a singer. She wasn't very good, but he tried to jump start her career by including copies of her records in packages of his paper cups. I think I still have some of them. Wouldn't surprise me if they were collector's items now.
Somewhat fewer years ago, Wordperfect gave away a demo CD with a demo version of Wordperfect 6.0, and the rest of the CD filled with original music.
Musicians give music away all the time. Did the music industry scream over either of these? No. Then why over this? Because Prince's music sells, and the others really didn't.
Real musicians see music as an expression of art. They make it for their own purposes, and they'd do it even if they didn't get paid (as long as they can eat). I know plenty of indie bands that are happy to "cover their expenses". The music INDUSTRY, OTOH, sees music as a commodity to be sold, like soap. If someone gives away free soap, then real soap makers sell less, and they lose money.
This perception is wrong-headed, but everyone is listening to the wrong people, with the wrong point of view. The sooner we give music back to real musicians, the better.
A number of years ago, I was responsible for handling software problem reports for a couple of vendors ATM machines. (We were a third-party service company.)
The things that went wrong with ATMs were both funny and scary. I have no reason to believe things have changed. The banks and manufacturers go to great lengths to satisfy customers without letting details of the problems get out, because this would undermine confidence in the devices.
With ATMs, if you're smart, you have a slip of paper to verify a transaction. If there's a dispute with the bank, the bank will usually honor the paper documentation, and the customer has no reason to make an issue of the problem.
With voting, there's no going back and fixing results after the fact. Often there's no piece of paper. And on top of that, the whole process is under fairly intense public and governmental scrutiny.
So I wouldn't say there are less problems with ATMs. You just don't hear about them.
This is sort of what we've been looking at for a while. We have a Linux grid, and there's a project now to hook our mainframe, running Linux, into it. The work units are all Java, so the biggest headache has been to get the vendors to port the parts of the management software that are in C.
These features have been in the IBM mainframes for 15 years. I haven't seen a hardware failure take down a zSeries box in over ten.
On a somewhat related note, I wonder how much more floor space those 200 servers take up, and how much cooling they consume, compared to an IBM z9. It's about the size of a large refrigerator. Unless they're using blades, we're talking maybe 10x the floor space.
Automatic mirror. Goes dark when headlights shine into it. My Honda has one, except the little light is green. Not complicated, and lots better than having to flip that switch up and down while you're driving in a rural area.