Why bother? Most business software - word processing, spreadsheets, DB front ends, image editing, browsers, etc, will run just fine on XP over the next few years.
You've never worked in a large corporation's IT policy department before;)
Some people won't have the option to stick with XP though. At home, sure you can run whatever OS you want, but at work it is a different story. Corporate IT departments are going to start forcing upgrades down (once they've tested it and found all the bugs relevant to that company's required apps). Some companies are really fast and aggressive about this, others are super duper slow and risk averse, but either way there are going to be people who are forced in to Vista.
There are many internally who feel that a Release Candidate really should be similar to what you describe. (though there is no reason to recompile without debug symbols, as you can just build the retail and debug builds at the same time for proper testing [the extra goo in a debug build changes timings and makes lots of debugger spew that regular dogfooders usually don't need to deal with])
Sometimes those people win, sometimes those people lose, and sometimes a middle ground is found between the two camps. Like saying "we know there are still some minor bugs we need to fix up before we ship, but all the major work is done". (where with a beta you know there is still major stuff left, or while the RC-purists want the RC to really be 'we think we're done, lets get some feedback to make sure we didn't accidentally overlook something').
There have been products that have shipped with just 1 or 2 RCs, and there have been products that have shipped like a dozen of the blasted things before finally RTM'ing.
I've seen a number of posts from Australians that didn't like Steve because he perpetuated stereotypes. Steve is nothing like old Crocodile Dundee (Paul Hogan). Dundee was a nice and honest guy, but he was really backwoods and I could see that Aussies wouldn't care for everyone in the world to think they were all like that.
But, Steve Irwin was a nice, honest, insanely friendly, good spirited, compassionate, intelligent, and yes a bit goofy, character. Is that really all that bad?
Half the people in the world think that all Americans are self-centered, money-obsessed, warmongers who don't give a crap about the environment, think it is fine to stab people in the back, and want to take over the world. (newsflash: there are a lot of people in the US, they aren't all the same. Heck there are only ~20 million people in Aus according to the 2004 Australian census results, compare that with the 17 million that are in Florida alone. If you don't think a stereotype is fair to stereotype Australians, why do you think it is fair to stereotype Americans when a single state has almost as many people! ) I'd much rather people think that Americans were all like Steve Irwin. And if you are pissed that people might think you guys have 'funny accents' and kind hearts - well, then you are not the type of Australian that I'd want to meet on a trip. When did being nice and a little quirky suddenly become something worth getting condemned for?
The exact numbers were never really relevant, only the concept was so I may be a bit off here. Generally if you have <100 people you would be small, and if you had over a thousand you would be large.
A company in the small category that is so small it doesn't have any IT guys is going to either buy some sort of support contract from someone to get it installed and configured. They'd then decide if they wanted to designate someone to keep it updated, or whether they'd want that included with this contract.
This reply goes out to not just you, but to the other 100 people who have said 'sometimes I NEED to type in all caps!!!':
You could still do 'caps lock' without having to have a dedicated key for it. Double-tap the shift key, hit the left and right shift at hte same time, or any of dozens of options could trigger a software caps-lock.
Now this would not solve the real problem (people that don't know WTF they are doing wHEN THEY TYPE LIKE AN iDIOT), but it would eliminate a superflous key so we could put something more useful in its spot.
Well, they're trying... Dev and test teams never want to release junk, and the extreme upper management (VPs, Gates, Ballmer, those type guys) never want to release junk either. Individual feature PMs never want their feature to suck when it is released either. Hopefully a 'positive mob mentatlity' forms, and everyone gets/stays on the same page, and doesn't let any stupid decisions be made!
/i'm a lightweight, its 1:30, I'm going to bed... good luck with your testing
It is the "RC1" part that I'm disagreeing with. You saw pre-release builds, yes. But you have not seen RC1 yet. While some of the current builds are okay, and some of them are tripe, the RC1 build should be much better. (by definition, since it would be a 'release candidate' and all)
I understand that you are not including service packs / minor revisions in your list, but you should include XP x64 at least. While it theoretically is "just XP but 64 bits" and technically is just "a service pack to windows server" it is much more then just a 'service pack' type upgrade. It was a desktop release out of the hardened Server 2003 codebase, with a ton of work put in to get x64 up and running.
Noones moderated you, so I don't know if I should take your post as being a joke or being a serious one.
If you are being serious...While it would be great if software truly was as easy as "each dev just writes 5k lines", it just isn't. Those lines all have to work with each other, they are not 5k lines written in a vacuum all thrown together at the last minute. Many of those lines are also more complicated the "if some_counter The interaction between the various parts of the system, the complexity of individual parts of the system, and tons of other things all combine to make it much more complicated then "just a bunch of people writing a few lines." I have never met any computer scientist that would say writing an operating system (Windows, Linux, an RTOS, even a custom OS for an embedded processor) is a 'puny project'. No CS would be that naive.
If you're joking... sorry for the previous paragraph;)
Your use of the latest Vista builds is irrelevant, I was not arguing about that. It is perfectly reasonable for me to assume that you are telling the truth, because there are many people that have pre-release Vista builds. I have no reason to not believe that you have used such a build.
If you look back at my post you will see that I was informing you that your statement "...MS decided to declare RC1 a few builds ago..." was inaccurate. Which it is.
I was a bit surprised when MS decided to declare RC1 a few builds ago (5472?).
They have not declared RC1. I'm not sure where you heard that, but it is inaccurate. (though your assumption that the 'screen black out' being due to the video card/ video driver is accurate, almost all cases of the screen black out were due to pre-release video drivers or video cards that are slow to do thing, or a system that is just totally overloaded - which i doubt your processor is)
...a million-dollar football field really bugs me. Though I suppose to the people involved with those, they're important as well.
Exactly. The problem with all the people that want to cut certain 'non-core' things away from school, is that they think they know what is important and what is not important. There are tons of people that say a 'million dollar' high school stadium is not worth it. (At the high school I attended, and other's I've visited the football field was usually surrounded by a track so it could do a few things at least). But, then they turn around and say that a 'million dollar' library at the school is worth it.
How do these people decide if the value of building a band practice room with accoustics in mind is more, or less, valuable then building a stadium with bleachers and a popcorn/drink stand? To the kids on the football/track/sports team the stadium is hugely valuable. To the kids in band having a room that isn't just a big concrete-walled square is valuable. To the kids in drama/band/chorus/dance the auditorium is valuable. And on and on.
I was in band and drama when I was in high school, used the band practice room daily, used the auditorium occasionally, and used the stadium weekly (during football season the band and the cheerleaders were at every game, and marching band practice needed a field too).
Now, looking back (graduated in 96) what do I think was the most important part of the school? It certainly wasn't the classrooms, the library, or the computer lab. It was those other areas - the band room where we practiced and goofed around, the auditorium where we performed, and the stadium where we performed and watched the games. Interpersonal relationships, conflict resolution, having responsibilities (miss a step in a marching show, and you could ruin the whoel thing by knocking some people over), all of those things had far deeper impacts on the students involved.
The kids that just took the 'core' educational classes didn't get nearly as much of that. It is very easy to go through many of the math/science/english/history classes without saying anything at all to other people in the class, and in many cases without even saying anything at all. Okay, so they learned (hopefully) the difference between "its" and "it's", but that doesn't necessarily mean they are ready for the real world. Now I'm not saying that every football player, cheerleader, and drummer is suddenly ready to take on the world and become president of the universe, but... I do believe that they all got benefits out of those 'extra' parts of school that are well worth the money spent.
I think I've been watching too much Family Guy recently... I read that sentence twice before I realized it did not say "A Monkey is a suprisingly efficient motivator."
You're right that there is no Compute Cluster Edition R2. I should have been more clear and said that you'd need to get either the x64 Standard Edition R2 or x64 Enterprise Edition R2 to get the SUA feature.
As for static linking... I think that's how you are supposed to be able to do it (in which case you'd need only a single R2 install, rather then ever node being R2), but I've never tried myself.
x64 is -not- the same thing as IA-64. ia64 = Itanium, or as you put it "real 64 bit". x64 = The 64-bit extensions ot the 32-bit instruction set that AMD came up with. AMD likes to call it AMD64, Intel likes to call it the bind-numbing EM64T, some people like to call it x86-64.
If you don't believe me, go download a trial copy of Server 2003 Standard x64, try installing it on your itanium, and then report back on how that worked out for you.
Microsoft's freebies were limited to an Opteron-specific Windows 2003 Cluster Edition beta and a cookie.
The beta worked on both the AMD and the Intel x64 hardware.
By comparison, many others had booklets on what their products did, papers
There were papers on what the product was. I got a little USB memory key, it was only like 32 megs so not super useful, but free, that had some documents on it. I'll assume that they were smart enough to print those documents out to hand out after the USB keys ran out.
working demos (the molecular modeler with forced feedback was amazing)
Right next to the booth with the 'cookie' were stations with somewhere between 5 and 8 different companies showing off their software sitting on top of the CCS. There were fluid dynamics, car crash simulation, and a couple others. Some of the demos were kinda lame so I didn't pay much attention to them, and a couple of the monitors were showing the same software doing different things, so I'm not sure the exact count.
and some highly knowledgeable geeks to answer detailed technical questions.
There were developers and feature PMs (the guys who write the specs that the devs implement) standing around. I bet that they had a passing knowledge of how their system worked.
I didn't stick around to watch the MS presentation so I can't comment on that. You are right that there were a bunch of other booths that were absolute disasters though.
Related to that post, one thing to remember is: there are smart people at Microsoft.
Just because some products suck (Bob), some features are super lame to technically-inclined people (Clippy), and some decisions were bone-headed (Outlook running macros embedded in random emails), doesn't mean everyone at the entire company is stupid. There are some absolutely brilliant people, a bunch of smart people, some average people, and, yes, even some fools - but that's the same with any company larger then, oh say, 20 people.
Microsoft has made good products, and they've had some duds. I use a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer on my Mac because i think it is the best 5 button non-gaming mouse that I've used, but I don't use Microsoft Word on my Mac. Pick the right tool for the job, based on the parameters of that particular job and you'll be set. Don't instantly discount Microsoft products just because you think every single person at the company was personally responsible for Code Red.
Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition supports 8 in a box, so if you happened to have 8 proc boxes you could just upgrade the OS.
Think about making a cluster out of blade servers, etc. Those aren't up to 16+ procs yet, so either the Compute Cluster Edition or the Enterprise Edition are fine in this case. You're talking about a totally different type of computer when you're talking 16+ procs. (8-64 procs requires 2003 Datacenter Edition which is an OEM product only available in conjunction with a certified DTC system)
Yes Microsoft is playing by the rules. In this case it is best for both the community (not much work to move over) and for Microsoft (not much work for people to move over).
The MPICH2 code is the reference implementation being used, and that's good for everybody. Another tidbit that is good for everyone - Microsoft is even helping non-Microsoft users of MPICH2. As amusing as it is to say, Microsoft does have some expertise in Windows programming and has learned a few things about writing solid and secure code (yes yes, ha ha, but seriously there are some sharp people at the company regardless of what people think about Clippy and Longhorn). Fixes that were made to MPICH2 are being shared back with Argonne National Labs.
I don't think anyone here is going to argue that the people at Argonne are stupid, so if they think they changes that Microsoft's high performance computing team made are good, then I'd say that's a pretty good thumbs-up to the MS team responsible.
Not quite right. Actually Services for UNIX is incompatible with the x64 versions of Windows Server 2003, which is the required operating system family for the Compute Cluster.
Server 2003 R2 (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/r2/wha tsnewinr2.mspx) adds the "Subsystem for Unix-based Applications" (SUA: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/r2/unix interop/default.mspx) . You can either install R2 on one machine and recompile your app to make a win32 version, or you can install R2 on all your compute nodes to get the SUA environment everywhere. (the first option would probably be better)
Please do. This 'new' slashdot looks horrible. It is not at all pleasant to read. As soon as the darn thing loaded with the new CSS it hit me in the head like a bag of bricks. Gross, gross, gross.
Slashdot Mirror
You've never worked in a large corporation's IT policy department before
Some people won't have the option to stick with XP though. At home, sure you can run whatever OS you want, but at work it is a different story. Corporate IT departments are going to start forcing upgrades down (once they've tested it and found all the bugs relevant to that company's required apps). Some companies are really fast and aggressive about this, others are super duper slow and risk averse, but either way there are going to be people who are forced in to Vista.
Does it matter? It is hard to swallow either...
There are many internally who feel that a Release Candidate really should be similar to what you describe. (though there is no reason to recompile without debug symbols, as you can just build the retail and debug builds at the same time for proper testing [the extra goo in a debug build changes timings and makes lots of debugger spew that regular dogfooders usually don't need to deal with])
Sometimes those people win, sometimes those people lose, and sometimes a middle ground is found between the two camps. Like saying "we know there are still some minor bugs we need to fix up before we ship, but all the major work is done". (where with a beta you know there is still major stuff left, or while the RC-purists want the RC to really be 'we think we're done, lets get some feedback to make sure we didn't accidentally overlook something').
There have been products that have shipped with just 1 or 2 RCs, and there have been products that have shipped like a dozen of the blasted things before finally RTM'ing.
I've seen a number of posts from Australians that didn't like Steve because he perpetuated stereotypes. Steve is nothing like old Crocodile Dundee (Paul Hogan). Dundee was a nice and honest guy, but he was really backwoods and I could see that Aussies wouldn't care for everyone in the world to think they were all like that. But, Steve Irwin was a nice, honest, insanely friendly, good spirited, compassionate, intelligent, and yes a bit goofy, character. Is that really all that bad?
Half the people in the world think that all Americans are self-centered, money-obsessed, warmongers who don't give a crap about the environment, think it is fine to stab people in the back, and want to take over the world. (newsflash: there are a lot of people in the US, they aren't all the same. Heck there are only ~20 million people in Aus according to the 2004 Australian census results, compare that with the 17 million that are in Florida alone. If you don't think a stereotype is fair to stereotype Australians, why do you think it is fair to stereotype Americans when a single state has almost as many people! )
I'd much rather people think that Americans were all like Steve Irwin. And if you are pissed that people might think you guys have 'funny accents' and kind hearts - well, then you are not the type of Australian that I'd want to meet on a trip.
When did being nice and a little quirky suddenly become something worth getting condemned for?
The exact numbers were never really relevant, only the concept was so I may be a bit off here. Generally if you have <100 people you would be small, and if you had over a thousand you would be large.
A company in the small category that is so small it doesn't have any IT guys is going to either buy some sort of support contract from someone to get it installed and configured. They'd then decide if they wanted to designate someone to keep it updated, or whether they'd want that included with this contract.
This reply goes out to not just you, but to the other 100 people who have said 'sometimes I NEED to type in all caps!!!':
You could still do 'caps lock' without having to have a dedicated key for it. Double-tap the shift key, hit the left and right shift at hte same time, or any of dozens of options could trigger a software caps-lock.
Now this would not solve the real problem (people that don't know WTF they are doing wHEN THEY TYPE LIKE AN iDIOT), but it would eliminate a superflous key so we could put something more useful in its spot.
Well, they're trying... Dev and test teams never want to release junk, and the extreme upper management (VPs, Gates, Ballmer, those type guys) never want to release junk either. Individual feature PMs never want their feature to suck when it is released either. Hopefully a 'positive mob mentatlity' forms, and everyone gets/stays on the same page, and doesn't let any stupid decisions be made!
/i'm a lightweight, its 1:30, I'm going to bed... good luck with your testing
It is the "RC1" part that I'm disagreeing with. You saw pre-release builds, yes. But you have not seen RC1 yet. While some of the current builds are okay, and some of them are tripe, the RC1 build should be much better. (by definition, since it would be a 'release candidate' and all)
I understand that you are not including service packs / minor revisions in your list, but you should include XP x64 at least. While it theoretically is "just XP but 64 bits" and technically is just "a service pack to windows server" it is much more then just a 'service pack' type upgrade. It was a desktop release out of the hardened Server 2003 codebase, with a ton of work put in to get x64 up and running.
Noones moderated you, so I don't know if I should take your post as being a joke or being a serious one.
;)
If you are being serious...While it would be great if software truly was as easy as "each dev just writes 5k lines", it just isn't. Those lines all have to work with each other, they are not 5k lines written in a vacuum all thrown together at the last minute. Many of those lines are also more complicated the "if some_counter The interaction between the various parts of the system, the complexity of individual parts of the system, and tons of other things all combine to make it much more complicated then "just a bunch of people writing a few lines."
I have never met any computer scientist that would say writing an operating system (Windows, Linux, an RTOS, even a custom OS for an embedded processor) is a 'puny project'. No CS would be that naive.
If you're joking... sorry for the previous paragraph
Your use of the latest Vista builds is irrelevant, I was not arguing about that. It is perfectly reasonable for me to assume that you are telling the truth, because there are many people that have pre-release Vista builds. I have no reason to not believe that you have used such a build.
If you look back at my post you will see that I was informing you that your statement "...MS decided to declare RC1 a few builds ago..." was inaccurate. Which it is.
(though your assumption that the 'screen black out' being due to the video card/ video driver is accurate, almost all cases of the screen black out were due to pre-release video drivers or video cards that are slow to do thing, or a system that is just totally overloaded - which i doubt your processor is)
Exactly. The problem with all the people that want to cut certain 'non-core' things away from school, is that they think they know what is important and what is not important. There are tons of people that say a 'million dollar' high school stadium is not worth it. (At the high school I attended, and other's I've visited the football field was usually surrounded by a track so it could do a few things at least). But, then they turn around and say that a 'million dollar' library at the school is worth it.
How do these people decide if the value of building a band practice room with accoustics in mind is more, or less, valuable then building a stadium with bleachers and a popcorn/drink stand? To the kids on the football/track/sports team the stadium is hugely valuable. To the kids in band having a room that isn't just a big concrete-walled square is valuable. To the kids in drama/band/chorus/dance the auditorium is valuable. And on and on.
I was in band and drama when I was in high school, used the band practice room daily, used the auditorium occasionally, and used the stadium weekly (during football season the band and the cheerleaders were at every game, and marching band practice needed a field too).
Now, looking back (graduated in 96) what do I think was the most important part of the school? It certainly wasn't the classrooms, the library, or the computer lab. It was those other areas - the band room where we practiced and goofed around, the auditorium where we performed, and the stadium where we performed and watched the games. Interpersonal relationships, conflict resolution, having responsibilities (miss a step in a marching show, and you could ruin the whoel thing by knocking some people over), all of those things had far deeper impacts on the students involved.
The kids that just took the 'core' educational classes didn't get nearly as much of that. It is very easy to go through many of the math/science/english/history classes without saying anything at all to other people in the class, and in many cases without even saying anything at all. Okay, so they learned (hopefully) the difference between "its" and "it's", but that doesn't necessarily mean they are ready for the real world. Now I'm not saying that every football player, cheerleader, and drummer is suddenly ready to take on the world and become president of the universe, but... I do believe that they all got benefits out of those 'extra' parts of school that are well worth the money spent.
I think I've been watching too much Family Guy recently... I read that sentence twice before I realized it did not say "A Monkey is a suprisingly efficient motivator."
You're right that there is no Compute Cluster Edition R2. I should have been more clear and said that you'd need to get either the x64 Standard Edition R2 or x64 Enterprise Edition R2 to get the SUA feature.
As for static linking... I think that's how you are supposed to be able to do it (in which case you'd need only a single R2 install, rather then ever node being R2), but I've never tried myself.
That wouldn't be as likely as seeing a Tools:Compute this on a Cluster of File:Offload to Cluster menu option in your favorite Windows application.
Sorry, but you are mistaken.
x86-64 == x64
x64 is -not- the same thing as IA-64.
ia64 = Itanium, or as you put it "real 64 bit".
x64 = The 64-bit extensions ot the 32-bit instruction set that AMD came up with. AMD likes to call it AMD64, Intel likes to call it the bind-numbing EM64T, some people like to call it x86-64.
If you don't believe me, go download a trial copy of Server 2003 Standard x64, try installing it on your itanium, and then report back on how that worked out for you.
There were papers on what the product was. I got a little USB memory key, it was only like 32 megs so not super useful, but free, that had some documents on it. I'll assume that they were smart enough to print those documents out to hand out after the USB keys ran out.
Right next to the booth with the 'cookie' were stations with somewhere between 5 and 8 different companies showing off their software sitting on top of the CCS. There were fluid dynamics, car crash simulation, and a couple others. Some of the demos were kinda lame so I didn't pay much attention to them, and a couple of the monitors were showing the same software doing different things, so I'm not sure the exact count.
There were developers and feature PMs (the guys who write the specs that the devs implement) standing around. I bet that they had a passing knowledge of how their system worked.
I didn't stick around to watch the MS presentation so I can't comment on that. You are right that there were a bunch of other booths that were absolute disasters though.
I'd have given you a +1 if I hadn't already posted in this thread this morning.
Related to that post, one thing to remember is: there are smart people at Microsoft.
Just because some products suck (Bob), some features are super lame to technically-inclined people (Clippy), and some decisions were bone-headed (Outlook running macros embedded in random emails), doesn't mean everyone at the entire company is stupid. There are some absolutely brilliant people, a bunch of smart people, some average people, and, yes, even some fools - but that's the same with any company larger then, oh say, 20 people.
Microsoft has made good products, and they've had some duds. I use a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer on my Mac because i think it is the best 5 button non-gaming mouse that I've used, but I don't use Microsoft Word on my Mac. Pick the right tool for the job, based on the parameters of that particular job and you'll be set. Don't instantly discount Microsoft products just because you think every single person at the company was personally responsible for Code Red.
Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition supports 8 in a box, so if you happened to have 8 proc boxes you could just upgrade the OS.
Think about making a cluster out of blade servers, etc. Those aren't up to 16+ procs yet, so either the Compute Cluster Edition or the Enterprise Edition are fine in this case. You're talking about a totally different type of computer when you're talking 16+ procs. (8-64 procs requires 2003 Datacenter Edition which is an OEM product only available in conjunction with a certified DTC system)
Yes Microsoft is playing by the rules. In this case it is best for both the community (not much work to move over) and for Microsoft (not much work for people to move over).
The MPICH2 code is the reference implementation being used, and that's good for everybody. Another tidbit that is good for everyone - Microsoft is even helping non-Microsoft users of MPICH2. As amusing as it is to say, Microsoft does have some expertise in Windows programming and has learned a few things about writing solid and secure code (yes yes, ha ha, but seriously there are some sharp people at the company regardless of what people think about Clippy and Longhorn). Fixes that were made to MPICH2 are being shared back with Argonne National Labs.
I don't think anyone here is going to argue that the people at Argonne are stupid, so if they think they changes that Microsoft's high performance computing team made are good, then I'd say that's a pretty good thumbs-up to the MS team responsible.
Not quite right. Actually Services for UNIX is incompatible with the x64 versions of Windows Server 2003, which is the required operating system family for the Compute Cluster.
a tsnewinr2.mspx) adds the "Subsystem for Unix-based Applications" (SUA: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/r2/unix interop/default.mspx) . You can either install R2 on one machine and recompile your app to make a win32 version, or you can install R2 on all your compute nodes to get the SUA environment everywhere. (the first option would probably be better)
Server 2003 R2 (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/r2/wh
Please do. This 'new' slashdot looks horrible. It is not at all pleasant to read. As soon as the darn thing loaded with the new CSS it hit me in the head like a bag of bricks. Gross, gross, gross.