2.) CPU clustering. I believe OS/390 could only have a maximum of 16 CPUs. I've heard that z/OS can have up to 64.
Yes, I think this is correct (though I haven't looked at the zPOO myself). This isn't a cluster, though (that term more properly applies to a Parallel Sysplex), but rather a single multiprocessor system.
3.) IBM is going trying to force the n-3 upgrade restriction again. Basically IBM releases a new version of the OS every 6 months. If you keep current on maintenance they will assist in an upgrade from any version 3 levels old. For example, if you are going to OS/390 R10 they will help if your current version is R7 or later. IBM always pushed this but Y2K made them make this a strong recomendation rather than a requirement. This is still going to be a tough sell because most companies don't like doing OS upgrades every 2 years.
Actually, I believe IBM relaxed that restriction for r10 to allow coexistence back to r6.
The bigger news here is that if you run z/OS on a 2064 (the 64-bit hardware), you *must* run it in 64-bit mode, as a licensing restriction, unless you get a special dispensation - and special code - from IBM. That means that shops who want to upgrade to 64 bits have a choice: either buy a 2064 as the first step in the migration, and migrate from OS/390 to z/OS later, or else upgrade to running in 64-bit mode the moment their 2064 hits the floor. I know of no mainframe shop which would choose the latter.
One other note: While Amdahl and Hitachi have bailed on the idea of producing a z/Architecture system, the folks who really do the work on Hercules are undaunted...Hercules supports 64-bit mode (though it's still a work in progress). Hopefully, before much longer, IBM will allow hobbyist licensing of z/OS, and some of the naysayers here will be able to see for themselves its true strengths and weaknesses. --
...could be exactly what is needed to help kick off 64bit computing - can anyone say 'open source'?
64 bit systems have been around for over a decade, and 64-bit Linux for at least 5 years. Ever heard of the Alpha? --
Just a little premature?
on
Rebel Code
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· Score: 1
While I agree with the premise, and it sounds like a good book to get, I do have reservations about one point: I'm not at all sure the Microsoft Era is over. I'm not even sure it's in decline yet. It's too prevalent, and far too many people are buying if just because it's Microsoft, to call it over. --
I'm using a Qlogic QLA2100 without any problem[...]
The QLA2100 is indeed one of the ones with a driver in the tree. The Compaq 64 bit/66 MHz host bus adapter is another. There may be others, though I don't recall seeing any. I wasn't saying it was impossible, just that you need to be careful what you get.
Another thing to note is that the stuff on the referenced page is FC over copper *only*. They do not require a GBIC on their board, which lowers the cost - but also removes the ability to use a fiber connection. Your HBA needs either a dedicated copper interface or else a copper GBIC. --
While it looks like Cinonic has handled the drive end of the connection, this doesn't do anything for the host bus adapter end. Fiber Channel HBAs are still pretty expen$ive, especially if you have to add a copper GBIC to them. There's also the issue of drivers for Linux (hey, this is Slashdot, after all); while there are some fiber channel drivers in the tree, there are more out there. Be careful before you drop a lot of bucks on FC drives and adapters to make sure you can get an HBA that you will be able to use for your system. --
Don't take anyone's word for what it says. Read it yourself.
What it said to me was that the appeals court upheld everything the district court did, except that it could only hold Napster responsible for failing to police the system. Judge Patel can craft an injunction that requires Napster to prohibit transmission of any work with a title and/or by an artist which Napster has been notified is copyrighted and may not be sent over the service, and to remove anyone who makes such a work available. Yes, people can rename their MP3s to not be obviously infringing, but then how do others find them? Either way, the injunction is effective the end of the road for Napster.
The appeals court's ruling makes Gnutella or something similar a certainty: without the power to police users of the service, there can be no contributory or vicarious infringement. Anyone providing a centralized indexing service for it, though, is in trouble if they allow copyrighted works to be listed. --
Re:Accidents, far more than firearms
on
Clever Girl Bess
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· Score: 1
Whereas, deaths from non-accidental firearms use have gone up every year since the 1920s!
You're emphasizing the wrong thing. The firearm itself isn't the killer...it's the person holding it. Blaming the tool for the person using it's criminal intent is not the answer. --
Accidents, far more than firearms
on
Clever Girl Bess
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· Score: 2
Jon, your liberal bias is showing. While accidents are indeed a major cause of injury and death for kids, firearms accidents are a tiny minority of that number. Ten times as many kids die in swimming pools than in firearms accidents, and more kids have been killed by airbags than school shootings since airbags were made mandatory on US cars. Further, deaths from firearms accidents have declined every year since the 1920s.
While your overall point is good, please don't taint it by pandering to a stereotype - that's the whole reason that geek profiling is bad, yet you insist on gun owner profiling. --
In a few short years, trillions of dollars of equipment - and at least that much in prerecorded viewing materials already in place - will be obsoleted by what seems to be a totally arbitrary decision to replace it all with incompatible HDTV systems. My question is simple: Why? What do I get out of the deal? Why should I spend thousands of dollars for what will be at best a limited return?
This change seems to benefit nobody but the manufacturers of TV receivers and other consumer equipment. For the consumer, HDTV is an answer in search of a question. --
Re:Is there free speech when all the places are ma
on
ACLU Takes on ICANN
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· Score: 1
ay, while your domain name is a.cx, it appears that you effectively control this domain name, which is a very different scenario that using "someisp.com/~you/gmsucks", where the ISP is an easy target for a trademark complain or other attempt at censorship, leaving the disgruntled consumer without the option to change the hosting to another ISP that will not be as easily pushed around.
I do indeed own conmicro.cx. However, that's a relatively recent innovation; that page used to be at http://www.phoenix.net/~jmaynard/explorer.html and http://jmaynard.home.texas.net/explorer.html , and it was found as often there as at conmicro.cx. I would assume that Ford, had it been sufficiently willing, could have chosen to use the trademarked name Explorer to cause trouble.
Now, honestly, I'm not sure if this whole ICANN/ALCU thing really is a problem that will turn into corporate control of domain names.... the reason I posted this, and I hope it was clear, is that if you're going to publish anything significant on the web, you need to be able to register your own domain name. Suggesting that others will find your site from search engines and not by remembering your name is only significant until the hosting under someone else's name ends and many links, bookmarks and stored search engine result all stop working.
I can't argue this too much...but it does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that controlling the DNS to limit trademark infringement - even if you accept the worst possible interpretation of that - will inevitably limit free speech. To answer your objection about stale links merely requires that the user be able to register a name, not a specific name. Putting an anti-GM rant at http://www.pinkhorseshoes.org/gmsucks.html (assuming the ranter owns pinkhorseshoes.org) is as effective as http://www.gmsucks.com/gmsucks.html, and doesn't have the problem of getting the name revoked. (I don't know of any trademark registration that would be infringed in any way by the use of pinkhorseshoes.org; if there is one, pick any other random name.) --
Re:Is there free speech when all the places are ma
on
ACLU Takes on ICANN
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· Score: 1
Controlling DNS' is like telling you what street you can stand on to give your speech.
The problem with this analogy is that, on the net, all streets are equal. It doesn't matter whether your anti-GM diatribe is posted at gmsucks.com or someisp.com/~you/gmsucks. My anti-Ford diatribe at http://www.conmicro.cx/explorer.html has been found by lots of folks, judging from the mails I've gotten over the years.
In a world where people find content via search engines, the actual domain name that content is at is its least important feature. If you've got someething to say - or even if you don't - people will find you. --
Why do people continually equate control over DNS with control over speech? They're not the same thing at all. A DNS name is merely a guide, pointing the user at a service, in an easier-to-remember form. --
CMGI has a legally enforceable duty to its shareholders to maximize its value, and to maintain and protect the value of its corporate assets. If they did not do so, they would be liable to their shareholders, both as a company and the directors individually. To expect a company not to pursue patent infringement claims is naive in the extreme. --
Where else in the world do kids shoot other kids in school?
This is way, way overblown. More kids have been killed by airbags than in school shootings since airbags became mandatory.
All of the anti-gun paranoia is based on raw emotion, not simple fact. None of the actual facts are enough to balance out the simple idea that the citizens' right to keep and bear arms is essential to guarantee every other right. --
The UN publishes a "quality of life" ranking from time to time, you migth want to read up on it.
Since when is the UN authoritative? Its rankings are based in disproportionate part on the presence of government-funded health care, something that is of highly debatable value. If the Canadian health care system is so great, why do Canadians flock to the US to be treated? --
the Supreme Court decision has an uncanny parallel to the decision made by the Serbian court.
Nope. The FLorida Supreme Court decision has that similarity. The US Supreme Court decision merely threw out the Florida Supreme Court decision and let things take the course they should have taken. --
Note on the former: Don't plan on going to either of those places if you don't like the cold and/or don't like paying taxes.
The power to tax is the power to destroy.
As for the cold, I just got back from a week in south Minnesota, where the temperature never got above +10 F and it snowed pretty much constantly. Live there? No fscking way. I live in Houston for a reason. --
IME, the tests are designed to test your knowledge of the low-level details of system configuration. Study up on the config files and implementation details of NFS, Samba, Apache, and the other common packages. As far as the questions on philosophy go, the way to answer them is to ask, "How would RMS answer this?": SAIR has bought into RMS' utopia hook, line, and sinker.
It's probably useful, but I agree: take the tests, but don't bother with the training, as it's only of marginal use. Get their study materials beforehand and go through them instead. Don't assume, just because you can ace the sample questions on their web site, that you can pass the test. --
IBM is trying real hard to gain mindshare for the S/390. Putting Linux on it is a major step in that direction: How many of you thought of the S/390 as a practical Linux platform?
There's one thing that IBM can do that would help both the Linux community and itself: Hobbyist licensing for its mainframe OSes. Very few folks would ever run a single Linux image on a 390. By far and away, they'd use the VM/ESA operating system, which allows multiple virtual machines on one physical one, or VIF, a cut-down VM intended for hosting multiple Linuxes. Unfortunately, a VM/ESA license costs about $25K on the smallest machine, going up from there. (I don't know how much VIF will cost.)
Before you say, "But no hobbyist will run their own S/390!", I'll point out that the Hercules S/390 emulator will run VM/ESA just fine. Now that running an S/390 is within reach of the hobbyist, IBM would gain a lot of mindshare by letting hobbyists run real configurations on their Linux boxes and get familiar with how it all goes together. --
Slashdot Mirror
Neither Trillian nor the Itanium are ready for prime time yet. The Alpha, and its OSes, are, and have been for years.
--
Thanks for an informative article...
2.) CPU clustering. I believe OS/390 could only have a maximum of 16 CPUs. I've heard that z/OS can have up to 64.
Yes, I think this is correct (though I haven't looked at the zPOO myself). This isn't a cluster, though (that term more properly applies to a Parallel Sysplex), but rather a single multiprocessor system.
3.) IBM is going trying to force the n-3 upgrade restriction again. Basically IBM releases a new version of the OS every 6 months. If you keep current on maintenance they will assist in an upgrade from any version 3 levels old. For example, if you are going to OS/390 R10 they will help if your current version is R7 or later. IBM always pushed this but Y2K made them make this a strong recomendation rather than a requirement. This is still going to be a tough sell because most companies don't like doing OS upgrades every 2 years.
Actually, I believe IBM relaxed that restriction for r10 to allow coexistence back to r6.
The bigger news here is that if you run z/OS on a 2064 (the 64-bit hardware), you *must* run it in 64-bit mode, as a licensing restriction, unless you get a special dispensation - and special code - from IBM. That means that shops who want to upgrade to 64 bits have a choice: either buy a 2064 as the first step in the migration, and migrate from OS/390 to z/OS later, or else upgrade to running in 64-bit mode the moment their 2064 hits the floor. I know of no mainframe shop which would choose the latter.
One other note: While Amdahl and Hitachi have bailed on the idea of producing a z/Architecture system, the folks who really do the work on Hercules are undaunted...Hercules supports 64-bit mode (though it's still a work in progress). Hopefully, before much longer, IBM will allow hobbyist licensing of z/OS, and some of the naysayers here will be able to see for themselves its true strengths and weaknesses.
--
...could be exactly what is needed to help kick off 64bit computing - can anyone say 'open source'?
64 bit systems have been around for over a decade, and 64-bit Linux for at least 5 years. Ever heard of the Alpha?
--
While I agree with the premise, and it sounds like a good book to get, I do have reservations about one point: I'm not at all sure the Microsoft Era is over. I'm not even sure it's in decline yet. It's too prevalent, and far too many people are buying if just because it's Microsoft, to call it over.
--
The QLA2100 is indeed one of the ones with a driver in the tree. The Compaq 64 bit/66 MHz host bus adapter is another. There may be others, though I don't recall seeing any. I wasn't saying it was impossible, just that you need to be careful what you get.
Another thing to note is that the stuff on the referenced page is FC over copper *only*. They do not require a GBIC on their board, which lowers the cost - but also removes the ability to use a fiber connection. Your HBA needs either a dedicated copper interface or else a copper GBIC.
--
While it looks like Cinonic has handled the drive end of the connection, this doesn't do anything for the host bus adapter end. Fiber Channel HBAs are still pretty expen$ive, especially if you have to add a copper GBIC to them. There's also the issue of drivers for Linux (hey, this is Slashdot, after all); while there are some fiber channel drivers in the tree, there are more out there. Be careful before you drop a lot of bucks on FC drives and adapters to make sure you can get an HBA that you will be able to use for your system.
--
What it said to me was that the appeals court upheld everything the district court did, except that it could only hold Napster responsible for failing to police the system. Judge Patel can craft an injunction that requires Napster to prohibit transmission of any work with a title and/or by an artist which Napster has been notified is copyrighted and may not be sent over the service, and to remove anyone who makes such a work available. Yes, people can rename their MP3s to not be obviously infringing, but then how do others find them? Either way, the injunction is effective the end of the road for Napster.
The appeals court's ruling makes Gnutella or something similar a certainty: without the power to police users of the service, there can be no contributory or vicarious infringement. Anyone providing a centralized indexing service for it, though, is in trouble if they allow copyrighted works to be listed.
--
Whereas, deaths from non-accidental firearms use have gone up every year since the 1920s!
You're emphasizing the wrong thing. The firearm itself isn't the killer...it's the person holding it. Blaming the tool for the person using it's criminal intent is not the answer.
--
While your overall point is good, please don't taint it by pandering to a stereotype - that's the whole reason that geek profiling is bad, yet you insist on gun owner profiling.
--
Besides, I find that those who argue the idiotic hacker/cracker definition debate, can neither hack nor crack.
Tell that to ESR.
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This isn't a hack. It's a crack. Please don't besmirch the honorable term "hacker" by associating it with this kind of theft of service.
--
This change seems to benefit nobody but the manufacturers of TV receivers and other consumer equipment. For the consumer, HDTV is an answer in search of a question.
--
I do indeed own conmicro.cx. However, that's a relatively recent innovation; that page used to be at http://www.phoenix.net/~jmaynard/explorer.html and http://jmaynard.home.texas.net/explorer.html , and it was found as often there as at conmicro.cx. I would assume that Ford, had it been sufficiently willing, could have chosen to use the trademarked name Explorer to cause trouble.
Now, honestly, I'm not sure if this whole ICANN/ALCU thing really is a problem that will turn into corporate control of domain names.... the reason I posted this, and I hope it was clear, is that if you're going to publish anything significant on the web, you need to be able to register your own domain name. Suggesting that others will find your site from search engines and not by remembering your name is only significant until the hosting under someone else's name ends and many links, bookmarks and stored search engine result all stop working.
I can't argue this too much...but it does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that controlling the DNS to limit trademark infringement - even if you accept the worst possible interpretation of that - will inevitably limit free speech. To answer your objection about stale links merely requires that the user be able to register a name, not a specific name. Putting an anti-GM rant at http://www.pinkhorseshoes.org/gmsucks.html (assuming the ranter owns pinkhorseshoes.org) is as effective as http://www.gmsucks.com/gmsucks.html, and doesn't have the problem of getting the name revoked. (I don't know of any trademark registration that would be infringed in any way by the use of pinkhorseshoes.org; if there is one, pick any other random name.)
--
The problem with this analogy is that, on the net, all streets are equal. It doesn't matter whether your anti-GM diatribe is posted at gmsucks.com or someisp.com/~you/gmsucks. My anti-Ford diatribe at http://www.conmicro.cx/explorer.html has been found by lots of folks, judging from the mails I've gotten over the years.
In a world where people find content via search engines, the actual domain name that content is at is its least important feature. If you've got someething to say - or even if you don't - people will find you.
--
Why do people continually equate control over DNS with control over speech? They're not the same thing at all. A DNS name is merely a guide, pointing the user at a service, in an easier-to-remember form.
--
CMGI has a legally enforceable duty to its shareholders to maximize its value, and to maintain and protect the value of its corporate assets. If they did not do so, they would be liable to their shareholders, both as a company and the directors individually. To expect a company not to pursue patent infringement claims is naive in the extreme.
--
...that someone would consider being a space and bandwidth hog a feature, instead of a bug...
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This is way, way overblown. More kids have been killed by airbags than in school shootings since airbags became mandatory.
All of the anti-gun paranoia is based on raw emotion, not simple fact. None of the actual facts are enough to balance out the simple idea that the citizens' right to keep and bear arms is essential to guarantee every other right.
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We need more individuals funding campaigns, and less corporations and soft money, etc.
I have no problems with this, as long as anything that applies to corporations applies equally to Big Labor.
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The UN publishes a "quality of life" ranking from time to time, you migth want to read up on it.
Since when is the UN authoritative? Its rankings are based in disproportionate part on the presence of government-funded health care, something that is of highly debatable value. If the Canadian health care system is so great, why do Canadians flock to the US to be treated?
--
the Supreme Court decision has an uncanny parallel to the decision made by the Serbian court.
Nope. The FLorida Supreme Court decision has that similarity. The US Supreme Court decision merely threw out the Florida Supreme Court decision and let things take the course they should have taken.
--
The power to tax is the power to destroy.
As for the cold, I just got back from a week in south Minnesota, where the temperature never got above +10 F and it snowed pretty much constantly. Live there? No fscking way. I live in Houston for a reason.
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...and the one freedom that guarantees all others is not protected by law: the right to keep and bear arms.
--
It's probably useful, but I agree: take the tests, but don't bother with the training, as it's only of marginal use. Get their study materials beforehand and go through them instead. Don't assume, just because you can ace the sample questions on their web site, that you can pass the test.
--
IBM is trying real hard to gain mindshare for the S/390. Putting Linux on it is a major step in that direction: How many of you thought of the S/390 as a practical Linux platform?
There's one thing that IBM can do that would help both the Linux community and itself: Hobbyist licensing for its mainframe OSes. Very few folks would ever run a single Linux image on a 390. By far and away, they'd use the VM/ESA operating system, which allows multiple virtual machines on one physical one, or VIF, a cut-down VM intended for hosting multiple Linuxes. Unfortunately, a VM/ESA license costs about $25K on the smallest machine, going up from there. (I don't know how much VIF will cost.)
Before you say, "But no hobbyist will run their own S/390!", I'll point out that the Hercules S/390 emulator will run VM/ESA just fine. Now that running an S/390 is within reach of the hobbyist, IBM would gain a lot of mindshare by letting hobbyists run real configurations on their Linux boxes and get familiar with how it all goes together.
--