Interesting, since DB2 was probably developed on a platform which is optimised for IO, while the x86 platform really sucks at IO, and the main postgreSQL development was done there.
One of the reasons is that in many mainframe organisations, it was nearly impossible to start up customer demanded projects.
One of my former bosses told me about this. They wanted something, the CIO of mainframe would stipulate a project cost and time that was not feasible, so many things got cancelled. That is the reason that people switched to PC's.
If the mainframe people had more of a hacker culture, where you can start with something small that does the job, and then provided guidance and expertise to provide what users wanted, I think mainframe like environments would have more marketshare.
The other thing is, when you start pricing an x86 server with the same hardware as a an AS/400 system, you will end up with pretty much the same price. But you won't have the same reliable OS and you certainly won't have all the other IO options which are available on AS/400.
I saw the same with Itanic a couple of years ago. Sure, you could buy an Itanium server cheaper at Dell, than a Sparc server at Sun, until you started going for the same feature set. If they are both priced the same, for the same hardware, who do you trust more ? Dell or IBM ? Dell or Sun ?
When your program dumps, it also makes room for other programs to run.
I hate this shit on Windows PC's which have to be used as a server. Instead of nicely terminating the program, you get a stupid pop-up which tells nothing whatsoever, and in the morning you see that the terminated application has blocked other programs from running.
It has always been Intel's POV that they should be the sole deliverer of silicon for PC's.
The reason for introducing MMX was the following. In 1995/1996 Philips Semiconductor was working on a project for creating a multi-media chip, which would have been an addition to the PC architecture. Intel did not like this and introduced MMX, so that they could say that such additional hardware was not necessary.
When I started in 1990 in the PC industry, there where Mac viruses plenty. The Mac was even more vulnerable than a PC, due to the auto execution of code when a floppy was inserted. I suppose most Mac viruses went the way of the dodo after the move to OS X, or maybe earlier after the move to the PowerPC platform.
No. The previous legislature (2x4y) was severely beaten in the last elections, one party which last time did not got over the 5% mark was in again, and one new party was also in now.
The people choose, and on basis of that the money is spread over all parties.
I think that what you are trying to say is that more money -> more campaigning -> more reinforcement of current incumbents, but this is not necessarily the case here.
Maybe it is because we are just more pluralistic : christian democrats (center), liberal (center right), socialist (center left), green (a third dimension), several shades of right to extreme right.
People do tend to swap political parties here, too, that is e.g. why the current purple legislature (blue-red (liberal-socialist)) got severely beaten by the christian democrats (although personally think that this was a case of good news is no news, and the opposition always found a reason to downplay the current legislature, but they themselves did not market very much the work that they did).
Niven and Pournelle understood it in 1974. In 'The Mote in God's Eye', they really took the integrated circuit of 1974 to the limit, by introducing portable computers, like PDA's, and I think even adding wireless networking (but only to the ship's computer I think).
That is what has been done here in Belgium, after several high-case money donation scandals and briberies.
Every party (we are lucky to have more than two, and a more fair voting system) gets a donation according to the number of voters and the number of seats they have after the elections.This also means that parties can lose part of their donation when their election share drops.
India and Russia have together developed such a system. It is a mobile platform, sporting up to 4 or 6 six missiles I think, each missile costs about 200 million dollar, but it is faster than a speeding bullet, and it was developed specifically to target carriers.
Floating point does not matter for low-power tasks.
What I would like to use these things for is as a small gateway server that can be powered 24/7, and that does routing, fetching of e-mail, POP3 (or something similar) and proxying.
But the French have helped you getting your independence (try to imagine how America could have been Australia times N), and they also helped you getting the Statue of Liberty.
I used VIM for years, and now I almost exclusively use Emacs (VIM for config files). I do not have much customisations, and I am learning Common Lisp, so I have no time for elisp, but Emacs lets me multitask fantastically, even in a terminal window. The way VIM handles buffers, multiple files and windows is just too awkward to be productive. And emacs shell-mode is also fantastic.
But currently, I switched to XEmacs, because it has better support under Windows and Cygwin. It compiled out of the box without patching.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting, since DB2 was probably developed on a platform which is optimised for IO, while the x86 platform really sucks at IO, and the main postgreSQL development was done there.
The only thing left of the Huns is their language, genetically the Hungarians have a Slavian heritage.
So you had the same weird experiences with Windows, I presume ?
One of the reasons is that in many mainframe organisations, it was nearly impossible to start up customer demanded projects.
One of my former bosses told me about this. They wanted something, the CIO of mainframe would stipulate a project cost and time that was not feasible, so many things got cancelled. That is the reason that people switched to PC's.
If the mainframe people had more of a hacker culture, where you can start with something small that does the job, and then provided guidance and expertise to provide what users wanted, I think mainframe like environments would have more marketshare.
The other thing is, when you start pricing an x86 server with the same hardware as a an AS/400 system, you will end up with pretty much the same price. But you won't have the same reliable OS and you certainly won't have all the other IO options which are available on AS/400.
I saw the same with Itanic a couple of years ago. Sure, you could buy an Itanium server cheaper at Dell, than a Sparc server at Sun, until you started going for the same feature set. If they are both priced the same, for the same hardware, who do you trust more ? Dell or IBM ? Dell or Sun ?
When your program dumps, it also makes room for other programs to run.
I hate this shit on Windows PC's which have to be used as a server. Instead of nicely terminating the program, you get a stupid pop-up which tells nothing whatsoever, and in the morning you see that the terminated application has blocked other programs from running.
For a nice story about taxes paid by American corporations, click here.
Best PC vs. 'legacy' analysis ever...
If you have a look at what paleontologists have reconstructed since the 1960's from the Burgess shale, you will see forms that ARE really weird.
It has always been Intel's POV that they should be the sole deliverer of silicon for PC's.
The reason for introducing MMX was the following. In 1995/1996 Philips Semiconductor was working on a project for creating a multi-media chip, which would have been an addition to the PC architecture. Intel did not like this and introduced MMX, so that they could say that such additional hardware was not necessary.
How did the sales of writable CD's do ?
When I started in 1990 in the PC industry, there where Mac viruses plenty. The Mac was even more vulnerable than a PC, due to the auto execution of code when a floppy was inserted. I suppose most Mac viruses went the way of the dodo after the move to OS X, or maybe earlier after the move to the PowerPC platform.
No. The previous legislature (2x4y) was severely beaten in the last elections, one party which last time did not got over the 5% mark was in again, and one new party was also in now.
The people choose, and on basis of that the money is spread over all parties.
I think that what you are trying to say is that more money -> more campaigning -> more reinforcement of current incumbents, but this is not necessarily the case here.
Maybe it is because we are just more pluralistic : christian democrats (center), liberal (center right), socialist (center left), green (a third dimension), several shades of right to extreme right.
People do tend to swap political parties here, too, that is e.g. why the current purple legislature (blue-red (liberal-socialist)) got severely beaten by the christian democrats (although personally think that this was a case of good news is no news, and the opposition always found a reason to downplay the current legislature, but they themselves did not market very much the work that they did).
Niven and Pournelle understood it in 1974. In 'The Mote in God's Eye', they really took the integrated circuit of 1974 to the limit, by introducing portable computers, like PDA's, and I think even adding wireless networking (but only to the ship's computer I think).
That is what has been done here in Belgium, after several high-case money donation scandals and briberies.
Every party (we are lucky to have more than two, and a more fair voting system) gets a donation according to the number of voters and the number of seats they have after the elections.This also means that parties can lose part of their donation when their election share drops.
India and Russia have together developed such a system. It is a mobile platform, sporting up to 4 or 6 six missiles I think, each missile costs about 200 million dollar, but it is faster than a speeding bullet, and it was developed specifically to target carriers.
Agreed. +Infinity Insightful. (Hmmm, is it firefox which does not support &8734; ?)
Floating point does not matter for low-power tasks.
What I would like to use these things for is as a small gateway server that can be powered 24/7, and that does routing, fetching of e-mail, POP3 (or something similar) and proxying.
Mr. Winkle Goes To War, with Edward G. Robinson.
I thought it meant Components Off The Shelf...
But the French have helped you getting your independence (try to imagine how America could have been Australia times N), and they also helped you getting the Statue of Liberty.
The French have given the computer world Prolog, Ada and Eiffel.
Elite was ported to all platforms of that time.
Here in Europe, Elite was first published for the BBC computer I think, it was available for Commodore 64, I ran it on my 48k Spectrum.
A whole lot of games in those years where published for different systems.
MSX was an attempt from several Japanese and European companies to create a standard in personal computers.
However, the IBM PC was already out for a couple of years, so it did not have that large a traction.
I used VIM for years, and now I almost exclusively use Emacs (VIM for config files). I do not have much customisations, and I am learning Common Lisp, so I have no time for elisp, but Emacs lets me multitask fantastically, even in a terminal window. The way VIM handles buffers, multiple files and windows is just too awkward to be productive. And emacs shell-mode is also fantastic.
But currently, I switched to XEmacs, because it has better support under Windows and Cygwin. It compiled out of the box without patching.