You are correct that XRF spectrometers require a source of excitation photons. The mercuric iodide devices which I referenced use a variety of radioactive isotopes as their sources, including Am-241, which is a gamma source. The spectral range for mercuric iodide detectors is similar to that of germanium detectors (at least from what I remember of my work in this field almost a decade ago), although the resolution is not quite as good as that yielded by liquid nitrogen-cooled germanium (one of the things I was working on improving, in addition to extending the detector's usable lifetime). However, the spectral range and resolution of mercuric iodide should be suitable for this particular application. The existing XRF equipment could easily be modified for this purpose. Exclude the excitation sources, and calibrate the software to recognize the appropriate peaks.
Could have used mercuric iodide detectors. Then they would have only needed to use a simple Peltier cooler. Been used for a decade and a half in portable x-ray fluorescence spectrometers manufactured by my previous employer. (I performed R&D work with on these detectors.)
I would rate Linux as mediocre on both counts. On top of that, this project is taking a GUI originally found on a highly threaded graphics system am bolting it on top of the monstrosity known as X window, which makes very poor use of threading. There is no way that the result will be even remotely as responsive as the original, not when it is running on a bloated and buggy pig like X.
GUI without the GUTS
on
BeOS For Linux
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· Score: 5, Informative
While BeOS had a nice GUI, its read strength was its highly efficient threading model, which made the OS very effecient and responsive. The OS was especially adept at efficiently utilizing multiple CPUs.
While it is certainly nice that Linux users will have the opportunity to benefit from a nice new GUI and API, the best part of the OS, alas, is being left behind...
...or take the approach taken by OpenVMS from the beginning: any time a system call needs a string, that string is passed by descriptor. Of course, when the programmer is sloppy and uses null-terminated strings for his own calls, a buffer overflow in OpenVMS would only crash the program. Overflowing data would be discarded rather than executed. It boggles my mind that this flaw in Unix still has not been corrected after all these years.
That is not FUD, that is the truth! I run OS X 10.1, exclusively, on a G3/500 portable. It has 640 MB RAM and is still very, very slow for any operation like window resizing or switching.
There is NO ACCEPTABLE REASON that it takes two seconds to drag a window to the bottom right hand corner of the screen to maximize it. None.
There must be something amiss with your system. I'm running 10.1 on a Rev A iBook (stock except for an added 128MB DIMM) and it screams. The only problem is that the old 3GB harddrive is getting stuffed.
But before they died, they were working on running the Connection Machine model on a network of Sun workstations, rather than the custom dedicated hardware.
Interesting. I was unaware of that. Thanks for the bit o' enlightenment...
Wherever VAXen are still in use? You make my case for me.:} I can count on one hand all the VAX/VMS professionals i know these days. They're outnumbered a hundred to one by mainframe admins, much less Unix or Windows people.
There are tens of thousands of OpenVMS systems still in use, primarily in markets where downtime is absolutely unacceptable; stock and commodity exchanges, military applications, banks and credit unions, health care, manufacturing, Lotto systems. Unix doesn't have a fraction of the security, reliability or scalability for the applications where VMS dominates. The only real competition in that space is Tandem NonStop NSK (now also owned by Compaq) and IBM's MVS and VM systems.
Every Intel processor comes off of a production line controlled by VMS systems (downtime costs BIG bucks in that business). Texas State Lottery has a dual-site cluster (such that if either Austin or Dallas were to be nuked, the Lotto would go on without loosing a single transaction -- of course, in that case, we would have bigger worries than the Lotto!). The University Federal Credit Union where I do my banking uses OpenVMS on the back-end of its IT infrastructure. My utility company (City of Austin Electric) uses OpenVMS (their system was put to the test shortly after upgrading from VAX to Alpha - in the wake of massive tornado in the area, their cluster popped out tens of thousands of repair work orders in short order, complete with maps, from an Oracle database without skipping a beat).
OpenVMS runs quietly in the background, and is one of Compaq's most profitable products, bringing in almost $4 billion in annual revenues (at least that is what it was year before last, which is the latest numbers I've seen). Sure, there aren't very many of us VMS System Managers around, but it doesn't take many people to keep VMS up and running. It just works. I happily meet the demands of approximately 40,000 users of our VMS-based print server pretty much single-handedly (that is on a single box that dates back to 1995 - now if only I could convince my superiors to spring for a second box for that service to improve print throughput). Maybe that's why consultants have been trying to create self-fulfilling prophesies of the "imminent demise" of VMS for the last twenty years - it doesn't keep enough IT people employed!
Odd that you should mention the Connection Machine and VMS clusters in this context. The Connection Machine (from Thinking Machines Corp) was a single computer with a massive number of CPUs arranged in a hypercube architecture within a single box, not a distributed network of computers. Sexy machine, the Connection Machine. Richard Feynman did some intriguing work during its development to mathematically prove that the architecture would scale well (and it did, to any arbitrary number of CPUs, provided the computation task could be sufficiently parallelized).
And VMS clusters haven't been ignored. Everyone and his dog has tried to copy the technology, although all have failed miserably. (Don't bother bringing up Beowulf here - not even remotely the same thing as a VMS cluster, although more applicable in the context of this thread.) Even Microsoft has failed to copy VMS clustering, a company which actually had access to the actual VMS clustering code thanks to their technology "sharing" - read "stealing" - agreement with DIGITAL. Of course, VMS clustering isn't about massively parallel distributed computing per se (although it can be easily utilized for that). VMS clustering is about zero-downtime for services and transparent access to cluster resources (disks, printers, authentication, tape drives, etc. - not just CPU cycles).
...that Apple can't be bothered to put decent video cards in most of their machines.
Ironic that you should make this complaint on the day that Apple becomes the first computer company to sell systems with the GForce 4 graphics card. See here.
This invention is achieved by the application and utilisation of a capital energy source to create a prolific income energy system, with the consequential composition being a "controlled loop, self-generating module", that produces instant and constant mechanical drive power and or instant and constant electrical power. This invention is mankind's first income energy reservoir from a capital energy source.
Sounds like the company is trying to cover their a$$es here by stating that their device is just a glorified battery!
Quantum mechanical proof that this device is impossible: the commutator of the Hamiltonian of a system with itself is zero. A non-zero result could only be obtained by an improperly defined Hamiltonian. (dE/dt = [H,H]=0 Q.E.D.)
Remember several years back when Apple was on the ropes and MS bailed them out with $150M ?
A bit off-topic, but I feel I must correct this. It is inaccurate to describe Microsoft's purchase of $150M in nonvoting Apple stock as a bail-out. That was a drop in the bucket compared to the billions in cash that Apple had in the bank, and was done largely as a PR move. In effect, Jobs convinced Gates to say to the world "See, even Microsoft has faith that Apple will continue to be around, so much so that we are investing in it and continuing to produce Office for the Mac platform." Microsoft has since sold those shares for a tidy profit.
As you pointed out, there was some quid pro quo in the deal, with Apple making IE the default shipping browser. However, what seldom gets mentioned is that Jobs managed to strike the deal because he had Gates over a barrelhead over theft of intellectual property, at least so the rumor mill grows...
Actually, these elven daggers were acquired by Pippin & Merry from a pile of weapons retrieved by Tom Bombadill from one of the barrows on the Barrow Downs (scene from the book not in the film). Your friend may have been referring to Aragorn returning their weapons to them in "The Two Towers" after finding them in the aftermath of a battle between orcs and the Riders of Rohan.
For another, it was announced well in advance, and shown in the previews, that the basic plot has been altered. There was NO love interest mentioned in Fellowship, yet it's in the movie according to the previews I've seen.
Admittedly, Arwen's role is greatly expanded in the film (seemingly subsuming the role of Glorfindle at the ford near Rivendell, at least from what I can tell from the previews), but I wouldn't say that the romance between her and Aragorn isn't mentioned in the book. It is, however, only glancingly hinted at. Of course, the story of their romance is expanded upon in one of the appendices. Aragorn's love for Arwen is also the source of his discomfort upon meeting the lovely Eowyn in The Two Towers. Without coming right out and saying so at that point, Tolkien makes it clear that Aragorn feels somewhat guilty about finding Eowyn attractive when his heart already belongs to Arwen.
It's all in the books, but if you blink, you'll miss it. Subtle nuances that one misses reading the book for the first time as a nine-year-old, then catch years later upon subsequent re-readings as an adult...
As for omissions, that is entirely understandable. I can't imagine American audiences sitting through a five hour version just to see scenes such as those involving Tom Bombadil and the Barrow Wights (hmmm, wonder if those parts were actually filmed? DVD anyone?), which, while adding to the overall mythic feel of the story, don't really advance the plot or contribute to character development.
The Silmarillion explicitly indicates that the Istari are Maier.
As for Tom Bombadil, that character remains an enigma, and J.R.R.T. intentionally left it that way. Every myth needs at least some mystery. The character is based upon an old rag doll (dressed in yellow and green) which belonged to J.R.R.T.'s son. He made up stories and poems about the doll, predating the LOTR. Some of this material was recycled for LOTR early on in the righting, when the story was still viewed as a light-hearted sequel to The Hobbit rather than a monumental and somewhat darker toned epic.
It is unlikely that Tom is one of the Maier, for the Ring has no power over him, yet the known Maier are susceptable to its influence (even Gandalf felt the temptation of the Ring). Tom cannot be one of the Valor, for he stated that he was in Arda before the coming of the Great Enemy, yet we know from The Silmarillion that Melkor was the first of the Valor to enter Arda. Perhaps he is Illuvatar himself, in the same spirit as God's appearance as a crazy old hermit in Douglas Adams' writing. Or perhaps he is some sort of nature spirit. My personal theory is that he is a one-of-a-kind creation meant to provide an example of perfect and blissful love, as manifested by Tom's love for the Daughter of the River....
Tolkein intentionally kept his real-world religious beliefs out of his Middle-earth works, preferring instead for his heroes to display an intrinsic moral and ethical nature, although his world had its own creation myth (as described in The Silmarillion). Within that mythical construct, Gandalf and the other Istari (the Wise) could indeed be characterized as angels incarnate.
Here is the Middle-earth mythos in a nutshell. There is a central deity named Illuvitar in the language of the elves. From Illuvitar's thought's sprung the Valor, a host of beings who one might consider as demigods or archangels. Through a magical song, Illuvitar and the Valor created the world, and Illuvitar breathed life into the living things there. Illuvitar created Elves and Men, but left them sleeping while he sent the Valor to prepare the world for their awakening. One of the Valor, Melkor (the first Enemy) was jealous of Illuvitar's ability to create life, and sought to undo the work of his fellow Valor.
Where does Gandalf fit into all of this? Ranking just below the Valor, there existed another rank of divine beings known as the Maier (roughly equivalent to the angels of Christian mythology) who served the Valor. Some of these were corrupted by Melkor. Among these corrupted Maier were beings who would come to be known as Balrogs (such as the fire-deamon fought by Gandalf in the Mines of Moria).
Melkor's main lieutenant was a fallen Maier known as Sauron, who became the primary Enemy after the eventual defeat of Melkor. Eventually, to counter Sauron's rising influence in Middle-earth, the Valor dispatched a number of Maier there, made incarnate. The Maier-made-flesh were known as the Istari (the Wise), and included among their ranks Gandalf the Grey (Mithrandir), Saruman the White, Radagast the Brown, and the two Blue Wizards, who are only mentioned in passing.
I'm only hitting the high points here. For the full story, it is well worth reading The Silmarillion, or at least perusing the Encyclopedia of Arda.
As they say, when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Mixing and matching languages in various modules to suit the task at hand is a time-honored approach. Use the language that is best for any given job, rather than blindly trying to solve all problems with one tool, no matter how awkward the results. FORTRAN for number crunching, Pascal for string handling, C or assembly for direct memory manipulation, etc. No room for language bigotry when writing quality code.
In fact, this is how much of the OpenVMS operating system is written (facilitated by the fact that the OS has a Unified Calling Standard such that all system calls and data structures are uniformly available from any programming language). The OS and its libraries were written in a mix of C, C++, Pascal, BLISS, Macro (a sort of processor-neutral meta-assembly language), and FORTRAN, although much of it was rewritten in C to facilitate the VAX to Alpha port (and now the Alpha to IA-64 port).
Besides, why would they axe a product that brings in almost $4 billion in revenue per year. Far better profit center than the PC business, especially in terms of margins...
Incorrect. "Official sources" have said nothing of the kind. DII COE requires support of OpenVMS for another 20 years, and developement and enhancement of the OS is ongoing...
As an addendum to my previous response, you may have mistaken the EOL of VAX as an EOL of VMS. One is a hardware platform, the other is an OS. The Q stopped taking orders for VAXen in 2000, I belive, following a plan for the EOL of VAX established prior to the Q's acquisition of DIGITAL. OpenVMS continues to run on the Alpha platform, and is being ported to IA-64.
Negative. VMS has never been EOLed, although DEC's marketing folks gave it quite a bit of short shrift in favor of NT. If VMS were to be axed, it would truly be a sad day for the industry. I can say without the slightest bit of hyperbole that, in my experience at least, there is not another OS on the market that is even remotely as stable, secure, and scalable (except perhaps IBM's VM or MVS systems, or the Tandem/Compaq NSK/NonStop OS, none of which I have direct experience with). VMS is immune to buffer overflow exploits, and even makes Unix look unstable by comparison. The DoD is heavily dependant upon it for many of their critical systems, as are many banks, credit unions, stock exchanges, and insurance and health care companies.
OpenVMS is currently in the process of being ported to the IA-64 platform (likely the first or second successor to Monroe, which will likely be an Alpha EV8 processor running IA-64 instructions in microcode... Thank goodness Intel finally admitted that they don't know how to design a decent 64-bit processor and brought in the Q's Alpha design engineers. Of course, the Q by the same action were admitting that they had no clue how to market the Alpha.)
Now what's this nonsense about overly long command lines? Any DCL command can be arbitrarily abbreviated provided that enought characters are provided to assure uniqueness...
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You are correct that XRF spectrometers require a source of excitation photons. The mercuric iodide devices which I referenced use a variety of radioactive isotopes as their sources, including Am-241, which is a gamma source. The spectral range for mercuric iodide detectors is similar to that of germanium detectors (at least from what I remember of my work in this field almost a decade ago), although the resolution is not quite as good as that yielded by liquid nitrogen-cooled germanium (one of the things I was working on improving, in addition to extending the detector's usable lifetime). However, the spectral range and resolution of mercuric iodide should be suitable for this particular application. The existing XRF equipment could easily be modified for this purpose. Exclude the excitation sources, and calibrate the software to recognize the appropriate peaks.
Could have used mercuric iodide detectors. Then they would have only needed to use a simple Peltier cooler. Been used for a decade and a half in portable x-ray fluorescence spectrometers manufactured by my previous employer. (I performed R&D work with on these detectors.)
I would rate Linux as mediocre on both counts. On top of that, this project is taking a GUI originally found on a highly threaded graphics system am bolting it on top of the monstrosity known as X window, which makes very poor use of threading. There is no way that the result will be even remotely as responsive as the original, not when it is running on a bloated and buggy pig like X.
While BeOS had a nice GUI, its read strength was its highly efficient threading model, which made the OS very effecient and responsive. The OS was especially adept at efficiently utilizing multiple CPUs.
While it is certainly nice that Linux users will have the opportunity to benefit from a nice new GUI and API, the best part of the OS, alas, is being left behind...
...or take the approach taken by OpenVMS from the beginning: any time a system call needs a string, that string is passed by descriptor. Of course, when the programmer is sloppy and uses null-terminated strings for his own calls, a buffer overflow in OpenVMS would only crash the program. Overflowing data would be discarded rather than executed. It boggles my mind that this flaw in Unix still has not been corrected after all these years.
Given the nature of alarmist, reactionary postings about "mutant" flies, perhaps the mod system needs a new category: Ill-informed (-1).
There must be something amiss with your system. I'm running 10.1 on a Rev A iBook (stock except for an added 128MB DIMM) and it screams. The only problem is that the old 3GB harddrive is getting stuffed.
Interesting. I was unaware of that. Thanks for the bit o' enlightenment...
There are tens of thousands of OpenVMS systems still in use, primarily in markets where downtime is absolutely unacceptable; stock and commodity exchanges, military applications, banks and credit unions, health care, manufacturing, Lotto systems. Unix doesn't have a fraction of the security, reliability or scalability for the applications where VMS dominates. The only real competition in that space is Tandem NonStop NSK (now also owned by Compaq) and IBM's MVS and VM systems.
Every Intel processor comes off of a production line controlled by VMS systems (downtime costs BIG bucks in that business). Texas State Lottery has a dual-site cluster (such that if either Austin or Dallas were to be nuked, the Lotto would go on without loosing a single transaction -- of course, in that case, we would have bigger worries than the Lotto!). The University Federal Credit Union where I do my banking uses OpenVMS on the back-end of its IT infrastructure. My utility company (City of Austin Electric) uses OpenVMS (their system was put to the test shortly after upgrading from VAX to Alpha - in the wake of massive tornado in the area, their cluster popped out tens of thousands of repair work orders in short order, complete with maps, from an Oracle database without skipping a beat).
OpenVMS runs quietly in the background, and is one of Compaq's most profitable products, bringing in almost $4 billion in annual revenues (at least that is what it was year before last, which is the latest numbers I've seen). Sure, there aren't very many of us VMS System Managers around, but it doesn't take many people to keep VMS up and running. It just works. I happily meet the demands of approximately 40,000 users of our VMS-based print server pretty much single-handedly (that is on a single box that dates back to 1995 - now if only I could convince my superiors to spring for a second box for that service to improve print throughput). Maybe that's why consultants have been trying to create self-fulfilling prophesies of the "imminent demise" of VMS for the last twenty years - it doesn't keep enough IT people employed!
Odd that you should mention the Connection Machine and VMS clusters in this context. The Connection Machine (from Thinking Machines Corp) was a single computer with a massive number of CPUs arranged in a hypercube architecture within a single box, not a distributed network of computers. Sexy machine, the Connection Machine. Richard Feynman did some intriguing work during its development to mathematically prove that the architecture would scale well (and it did, to any arbitrary number of CPUs, provided the computation task could be sufficiently parallelized).
And VMS clusters haven't been ignored. Everyone and his dog has tried to copy the technology, although all have failed miserably. (Don't bother bringing up Beowulf here - not even remotely the same thing as a VMS cluster, although more applicable in the context of this thread.) Even Microsoft has failed to copy VMS clustering, a company which actually had access to the actual VMS clustering code thanks to their technology "sharing" - read "stealing" - agreement with DIGITAL. Of course, VMS clustering isn't about massively parallel distributed computing per se (although it can be easily utilized for that). VMS clustering is about zero-downtime for services and transparent access to cluster resources (disks, printers, authentication, tape drives, etc. - not just CPU cycles).
...or to be a bit more up to date, OpenVMS Clusters. (OpenVMS runs not only on the VAX hardware platform, but also Alpha, and soon IA64.)
I was under the impression that Visors are not upgradeable. That is the main reason I've avoided them and stuck with actual Palm handhelds.
Ironic that you should make this complaint on the day that Apple becomes the first computer company to sell systems with the GForce 4 graphics card. See here.
From http://www.jasker.com/article2.htm:
Sounds like the company is trying to cover their a$$es here by stating that their device is just a glorified battery!
Quantum mechanical proof that this device is impossible: the commutator of the Hamiltonian of a system with itself is zero. A non-zero result could only be obtained by an improperly defined Hamiltonian. (dE/dt = [H,H]=0 Q.E.D.)
A bit off-topic, but I feel I must correct this. It is inaccurate to describe Microsoft's purchase of $150M in nonvoting Apple stock as a bail-out. That was a drop in the bucket compared to the billions in cash that Apple had in the bank, and was done largely as a PR move. In effect, Jobs convinced Gates to say to the world "See, even Microsoft has faith that Apple will continue to be around, so much so that we are investing in it and continuing to produce Office for the Mac platform." Microsoft has since sold those shares for a tidy profit.
As you pointed out, there was some quid pro quo in the deal, with Apple making IE the default shipping browser. However, what seldom gets mentioned is that Jobs managed to strike the deal because he had Gates over a barrelhead over theft of intellectual property, at least so the rumor mill grows...
Actually, these elven daggers were acquired by Pippin & Merry from a pile of weapons retrieved by Tom Bombadill from one of the barrows on the Barrow Downs (scene from the book not in the film). Your friend may have been referring to Aragorn returning their weapons to them in "The Two Towers" after finding them in the aftermath of a battle between orcs and the Riders of Rohan.
Glorfindal is a guy. The "she" you are referring to who shows up again in "Return of the King" is Arwen.
Admittedly, Arwen's role is greatly expanded in the film (seemingly subsuming the role of Glorfindle at the ford near Rivendell, at least from what I can tell from the previews), but I wouldn't say that the romance between her and Aragorn isn't mentioned in the book. It is, however, only glancingly hinted at. Of course, the story of their romance is expanded upon in one of the appendices. Aragorn's love for Arwen is also the source of his discomfort upon meeting the lovely Eowyn in The Two Towers. Without coming right out and saying so at that point, Tolkien makes it clear that Aragorn feels somewhat guilty about finding Eowyn attractive when his heart already belongs to Arwen.
It's all in the books, but if you blink, you'll miss it. Subtle nuances that one misses reading the book for the first time as a nine-year-old, then catch years later upon subsequent re-readings as an adult...
As for omissions, that is entirely understandable. I can't imagine American audiences sitting through a five hour version just to see scenes such as those involving Tom Bombadil and the Barrow Wights (hmmm, wonder if those parts were actually filmed? DVD anyone?), which, while adding to the overall mythic feel of the story, don't really advance the plot or contribute to character development.
The Silmarillion explicitly indicates that the Istari are Maier.
As for Tom Bombadil, that character remains an enigma, and J.R.R.T. intentionally left it that way. Every myth needs at least some mystery. The character is based upon an old rag doll (dressed in yellow and green) which belonged to J.R.R.T.'s son. He made up stories and poems about the doll, predating the LOTR. Some of this material was recycled for LOTR early on in the righting, when the story was still viewed as a light-hearted sequel to The Hobbit rather than a monumental and somewhat darker toned epic.
It is unlikely that Tom is one of the Maier, for the Ring has no power over him, yet the known Maier are susceptable to its influence (even Gandalf felt the temptation of the Ring). Tom cannot be one of the Valor, for he stated that he was in Arda before the coming of the Great Enemy, yet we know from The Silmarillion that Melkor was the first of the Valor to enter Arda. Perhaps he is Illuvatar himself, in the same spirit as God's appearance as a crazy old hermit in Douglas Adams' writing. Or perhaps he is some sort of nature spirit. My personal theory is that he is a one-of-a-kind creation meant to provide an example of perfect and blissful love, as manifested by Tom's love for the Daughter of the River....
Tolkein intentionally kept his real-world religious beliefs out of his Middle-earth works, preferring instead for his heroes to display an intrinsic moral and ethical nature, although his world had its own creation myth (as described in The Silmarillion). Within that mythical construct, Gandalf and the other Istari (the Wise) could indeed be characterized as angels incarnate.
Here is the Middle-earth mythos in a nutshell. There is a central deity named Illuvitar in the language of the elves. From Illuvitar's thought's sprung the Valor, a host of beings who one might consider as demigods or archangels. Through a magical song, Illuvitar and the Valor created the world, and Illuvitar breathed life into the living things there. Illuvitar created Elves and Men, but left them sleeping while he sent the Valor to prepare the world for their awakening. One of the Valor, Melkor (the first Enemy) was jealous of Illuvitar's ability to create life, and sought to undo the work of his fellow Valor.
Where does Gandalf fit into all of this? Ranking just below the Valor, there existed another rank of divine beings known as the Maier (roughly equivalent to the angels of Christian mythology) who served the Valor. Some of these were corrupted by Melkor. Among these corrupted Maier were beings who would come to be known as Balrogs (such as the fire-deamon fought by Gandalf in the Mines of Moria).
Melkor's main lieutenant was a fallen Maier known as Sauron, who became the primary Enemy after the eventual defeat of Melkor. Eventually, to counter Sauron's rising influence in Middle-earth, the Valor dispatched a number of Maier there, made incarnate. The Maier-made-flesh were known as the Istari (the Wise), and included among their ranks Gandalf the Grey (Mithrandir), Saruman the White, Radagast the Brown, and the two Blue Wizards, who are only mentioned in passing.
I'm only hitting the high points here. For the full story, it is well worth reading The Silmarillion, or at least perusing the Encyclopedia of Arda.
In fact, this is how much of the OpenVMS operating system is written (facilitated by the fact that the OS has a Unified Calling Standard such that all system calls and data structures are uniformly available from any programming language). The OS and its libraries were written in a mix of C, C++, Pascal, BLISS, Macro (a sort of processor-neutral meta-assembly language), and FORTRAN, although much of it was rewritten in C to facilitate the VAX to Alpha port (and now the Alpha to IA-64 port).
Besides, why would they axe a product that brings in almost $4 billion in revenue per year. Far better profit center than the PC business, especially in terms of margins...
Incorrect. "Official sources" have said nothing of the kind. DII COE requires support of OpenVMS for another 20 years, and developement and enhancement of the OS is ongoing...
As an addendum to my previous response, you may have mistaken the EOL of VAX as an EOL of VMS. One is a hardware platform, the other is an OS. The Q stopped taking orders for VAXen in 2000, I belive, following a plan for the EOL of VAX established prior to the Q's acquisition of DIGITAL. OpenVMS continues to run on the Alpha platform, and is being ported to IA-64.
Negative. VMS has never been EOLed, although DEC's marketing folks gave it quite a bit of short shrift in favor of NT. If VMS were to be axed, it would truly be a sad day for the industry. I can say without the slightest bit of hyperbole that, in my experience at least, there is not another OS on the market that is even remotely as stable, secure, and scalable (except perhaps IBM's VM or MVS systems, or the Tandem/Compaq NSK/NonStop OS, none of which I have direct experience with). VMS is immune to buffer overflow exploits, and even makes Unix look unstable by comparison. The DoD is heavily dependant upon it for many of their critical systems, as are many banks, credit unions, stock exchanges, and insurance and health care companies.
OpenVMS is currently in the process of being ported to the IA-64 platform (likely the first or second successor to Monroe, which will likely be an Alpha EV8 processor running IA-64 instructions in microcode... Thank goodness Intel finally admitted that they don't know how to design a decent 64-bit processor and brought in the Q's Alpha design engineers. Of course, the Q by the same action were admitting that they had no clue how to market the Alpha.)
Now what's this nonsense about overly long command lines? Any DCL command can be arbitrarily abbreviated provided that enought characters are provided to assure uniqueness...