True enough - creating a profit from recorded performances is mostly an artifact of the 20th century. In the early days of the recording industry the artists didn't even get royalties from sales - they were paid a performance fee for the recording session, and that was it. Millionaire actors and musicians are a recent peculiarity, it's not a divine right.
Now if you consider the fact that we have no TRUE enemies among the countries capable of a useful mars mission, you will realize that COOPERATION is what will drive the next great exploration of the solar system.
I might find that a little more credible if that wasn't the same song and dance we heard when we got sold the ISS as an alternative to exploring space autonomously. So far, cooperation has done for space exploration what icebergs did for the Titanic.
I don't think uniformity with other Linux distros is a consideration here, and objectively it might even be a disadvantage if they're trying to get developers to target a specific standard. Think OS X - it's built on FreeBSD, but virtually no vendor targets it as such, they target OS X specifically, which is why you don't have the confusion of applications you have in the Linux world. Starting from a clean slate might have some advantages. I'm guessing they might retain X11 as an optional feature that runs on top of whatever windowing system they come up with, similar to what Apple does with OS X.
I'm sure Steve Jobs can also afford a much better car or house than you can, too. Do you also think you're entitled to a Porsche and a mansion because you're risking more of your life to pay for your house and car?
Everyone is valueable to those around them in life and death situations. Would you love your mother more because she's rich? IF so... you're SICK.
They may be valueable to those around them, but that doesn't necessarily make them valuable to anyone else. If my mother gets sick, she's valuable enough to me that I'll pay for her health care. Your mother is your problem.
Or are you talking about folks who went through years of medical school with the sole goal of getting a big paycheck, who might be upset to have a smaller paycheck? They can deal with it just like all the IT guys who lived through the.com crash... And all the auto employees who are suddenly wondering about their next paycheck... And all the auto dealerships who've suddenly discovered they're out of luck... Or anyone else who suddenly finds themselves un(der)employed.
And deal with it they do - how many people do you know that are going into those professions fresh out school now that they're no longer valued? Are you saying you'd like to have less doctors?
Hint: constricting supply usually doesn't help to reduce cost.
That's easy. A "right", properly understood, is the freedom to act. A right to free speech, a right to bear arms, a right to practice your choice of religion or not, those are legitimate rights. When you start talking about things other people are forced to provide you with, such as a "right" to health care, you talking about an entitlement, not a right. In fact, since somebody else is forced to either provide or pay for your "right", it's not only not a right at all, but a violation of somebody else's right to their labor or their property.
I didn't really think it was ready for an enterprise OS yet, either. The last time I checked, about a year ago, Sun still didn't support booting from a ZFS file system, and it only had performance benefits in a few specific situations. It had some great ideas in it, but it still wasn't ready for prime-time as general use file system, and I really didn't see what the attraction was for a Mac user, other than a novelty. If I were Apple, it wouldn't have been a number one priority for me to deliver, either.
Well, you might want to consider there are 1.3 billion Chinese to 300 million Americans. If you're going to consider representation as a percentage of population, Russia's performance, with a population of only 140 million, was a hell of a lot more impressive than China's.
But, is the Intel architecture really worth maintaining? The only reason I can see keeping the current IA32 around is that there's such a huge code base, and realistically if we cut the cord now, it wouldn't be too long before we could just use emulation for the old non-portable code.
Well, that's really more of an economics issue than a technical one - when does the value of the features a new architecture offers become greater than the value of maintaining the legacy applications of old architecture?
There have already been lots of better architectures, but the improvements weren't sufficient offset the advantage being able to support the legacy applications.
You may be seeing that value proposition changing already, though. As phones, netbooks, game consoles, etc. accrue more of the applications and functions once reserved for desktops and servers, they reduce the value of the old architecture. But that's not really one architecture replacing another as a drop-in replacement, that's more of a change of paradigm - the action is moving somewhere else.
Any OS requiring >90% of configuration changes to be made in a GUI does not count as UNIX, in my book. I'll grant you that OS X is UNIX-certified, but OS X is _not_ SVR4 UNIX.
So what? Neither is Linux, and neither was the original SunOS. In fact, if you look at the early Linux distros like SLS or Slackware, they basically emulated SunOS, which meant that the file layouts, init scripts and command syntaxes were much more BSD-like than SysV like.
Anyway, it's been a long time since SVR4 was released - 1990. I can guarantee that at this point, AIX, HP-UX and Solaris have all diverged a long, long way from the original SVR4, not to mention from each other. It's doubtful much original SVR4 code remains in any of them. Given that OS X conforms to the same standards as any of those do, I'm not sure why you think it's ancestry is any kind of significant.
Which makes no sense. Why would you pay the Apple tax for a pretty face on X11, xterm and emacs when you can get the same thing from a Linux machine (or even an OpenSolaris PC, if you're a traditionalist) for probably half the price ?
Well, because not only do I get my X11, xterm and emacs, I also get my MS Office, Lotus Notes, Aventail Connect, Mobility Client, Sametime, RDC and other productivity apps that I need to function in a business environment I'm not gonna get on Solaris or Linux. That doesn't even count the apps like iTunes, Quicktime, VLC, etc. The point is, I can use it as a Unix workstation, and I can also use it as business/consumer laptop.
Also, running Solaris or Linux is going to be every bit as much of a battle, if not more so, as running Windows, requiring constant tweaking and configuration to get your hardware recognized (if you can) and getting all your applications to play together nice. Yes, it *does* Just Work. As I happen to be an actual sysadmin in a shop with over 1700 Solaris, HP, AIX and Linux boxes, I already have enough problems without going out my way to create more for myself.
And no, Cygwin does not do it just as well. The only thing Cygwin gives you is all of the problems of Window, with an additional layer of aggravation. Cygwin is what finally drove me over the edge to get a Mac in the first place. Just try doing cut and paste between your Windows productivity apps and your X or bash shell environments in Cygwin, and you'll find out fast. On a Mac your Unix and productivity environments are integrated seamlessly.
I've been a Linux/Unix admin for 12 years and as far as being a unix goes, even Cygwin does a better job than OS X of acting the way Unix users expect.
ROFLMAO!! Well, I've been a unix admin since 1992 - and it was Cygwin that finally drove me off of Windows on to the Mac....
Which says zero about whether or not they can (or are) running them like they would they Solaris, HP UX, AIX, or anything else machines. I'd be more than willing to bet that they're "adminning" them just like any other Mac user would - ie: mostly through the GUI.
Well, you don't admin an AIX box like Solaris box like an HP box. There's no smitty on Solaris or SAM on AIX. If you're saying that OS X is different from the others, sure. But not really so much different from them than they are from each other. A Solaris admin isn't going to be any more at sea learning to admin an OS X box than he would learning AIX or Linux. It's a difference without a distinction.
The antitrust problems are far too large. Especially in light of the massive "too big to fail" problems we've seen in other industries. The computer tech industry cannot be allowed to put this many eggs in so few baskets.
What antitrust problem? The alternative is that Sun goes out of business.
Based on their comments so far, Solaris will mostly be living on x86, AIX will live on Power, and IBM will turn to third parties for legacy Sparc support. I think Solaris will survive, as a commodity offering. But this is probably the death-knell for Sparc.
Somehow, I don't see much of Solaris on Power. If there had been any customer demand for it, either IBM or Sun would have provided it by now. Sun would have been happy to sell IBM an OS, and IBM would have been happy to sell Sun some chips. Neither one of them did it, which inclines me to believe there wasn't enough customer interest for it to be profitable.
My guess is that Solaris will become a commodity offering primarily on x86. AIX will remain the premium offering on Power. Over time, I'd expect most of Solaris's most compelling features will wind up getting migrated to AIX. The statements made on the matter so far tend to back that up.
... it can also mean "it's twice as much as you need to spend for what you're going to do with it."
That's true. In fact, every time I've ever spent money on a top-of-the-line computer, I've generally found it was overkill, or the additional features were drawbacks rather than assets. I had a MacBook, and liked it so well I got a MacBook Pro. Turns out that while the MBP is technically the nicer computer, it's also a larger, heavier and hotter one. The result being that the MacBook remained my main computer, and the MPB being the backup. The lesson being that sometimes, all the glittery features look better in the store window than they do after you get the thing home. Realistically, the MacBook already met all of my needs. These days, I generally buy refurbs and budget models.
That's true. I was checking out prices for an upgrade from Crucial for a MacBook Pro. To my surprise, I found that just ordering the configuration I wanted from Apple would be cheaper.
Yeah, I'm having a little trouble believing that's going to be an adequate space-craft for going to Mars. For a several day trip to the moon, ok - but being bottled up in that thing for 2-3 years? And where are you going to store several years worth of supplies in there?
Some interesting info I picked up doing some research on who was hiring whom, and where. Here's a short list of companies in our industry, and the number of H1-B's they hired in 2008.
Microsoft: 4437 IBM: 1413 Hewlett-Packard: 520 Apple Computer: 291
You tell me - which of these companies has produced the most innovative products over the last decade? By the way - unlike the other three, Apple doesn't offshore their product development - it's all done in Cupertino, Ca. Also, when you call their tech support, you'll reliably get connected with someone who speaks English.
If you've been using Solaris on x64 and don't want to throw out all your hardware, then Linux is probably your only migration path.
Actually, my guess is that x64 will be Solaris's new home, AIX will stay on Power, and Sparc will go bye-bye (it was most probably doomed eventually, anyway). I'm guessing Solaris will be the commodity product, and AIX will be the premium product. Over time, you'll see AIX absorb the best features of Solaris. Somehow, I doubt you'll ever see Solaris on Power, or AIX on Intel, let alone Sparc.
I hope IBM does not buy Sun because IBM would almost certainly flush Solaris down the toilet.
I doubt that. I expect Solaris and AIX would eventually be merged, but it would likely be an incremental process that wouldn't be completed for a long, long time. Consider how many years it took them to merge the i and the p series hardware platforms.
Slashdot Mirror
True enough - creating a profit from recorded performances is mostly an artifact of the 20th century. In the early days of the recording industry the artists didn't even get royalties from sales - they were paid a performance fee for the recording session, and that was it. Millionaire actors and musicians are a recent peculiarity, it's not a divine right.
Now if you consider the fact that we have no TRUE enemies among the countries capable of a useful mars mission, you will realize that COOPERATION is what will drive the next great exploration of the solar system.
I might find that a little more credible if that wasn't the same song and dance we heard when we got sold the ISS as an alternative to exploring space autonomously. So far, cooperation has done for space exploration what icebergs did for the Titanic.
I don't think uniformity with other Linux distros is a consideration here, and objectively it might even be a disadvantage if they're trying to get developers to target a specific standard. Think OS X - it's built on FreeBSD, but virtually no vendor targets it as such, they target OS X specifically, which is why you don't have the confusion of applications you have in the Linux world. Starting from a clean slate might have some advantages. I'm guessing they might retain X11 as an optional feature that runs on top of whatever windowing system they come up with, similar to what Apple does with OS X.
I'm sure Steve Jobs can also afford a much better car or house than you can, too. Do you also think you're entitled to a Porsche and a mansion because you're risking more of your life to pay for your house and car?
Everyone is valueable to those around them in life and death situations. Would you love your mother more because she's rich? IF so... you're SICK.
They may be valueable to those around them, but that doesn't necessarily make them valuable to anyone else. If my mother gets sick, she's valuable enough to me that I'll pay for her health care. Your mother is your problem.
Or are you talking about folks who went through years of medical school with the sole goal of getting a big paycheck, who might be upset to have a smaller paycheck? They can deal with it just like all the IT guys who lived through the .com crash... And all the auto employees who are suddenly wondering about their next paycheck... And all the auto dealerships who've suddenly discovered they're out of luck... Or anyone else who suddenly finds themselves un(der)employed.
And deal with it they do - how many people do you know that are going into those professions fresh out school now that they're no longer valued? Are you saying you'd like to have less doctors?
Hint: constricting supply usually doesn't help to reduce cost.
That's easy. A "right", properly understood, is the freedom to act. A right to free speech, a right to bear arms, a right to practice your choice of religion or not, those are legitimate rights. When you start talking about things other people are forced to provide you with, such as a "right" to health care, you talking about an entitlement, not a right. In fact, since somebody else is forced to either provide or pay for your "right", it's not only not a right at all, but a violation of somebody else's right to their labor or their property.
I didn't really think it was ready for an enterprise OS yet, either. The last time I checked, about a year ago, Sun still didn't support booting from a ZFS file system, and it only had performance benefits in a few specific situations. It had some great ideas in it, but it still wasn't ready for prime-time as general use file system, and I really didn't see what the attraction was for a Mac user, other than a novelty. If I were Apple, it wouldn't have been a number one priority for me to deliver, either.
Well, you might want to consider there are 1.3 billion Chinese to 300 million Americans. If you're going to consider representation as a percentage of population, Russia's performance, with a population of only 140 million, was a hell of a lot more impressive than China's.
Yes there are innovations that come out of Sun, but hold long can Sparc compete with Intel/AMD and Solaris compete with Linux.
Considering Sun just lost their lead chip designer to Microsoft, I'd say Sparc, if not Sun itself, has had the last nail driven into it's coffin already.
But, is the Intel architecture really worth maintaining? The only reason I can see keeping the current IA32 around is that there's such a huge code base, and realistically if we cut the cord now, it wouldn't be too long before we could just use emulation for the old non-portable code.
Well, that's really more of an economics issue than a technical one - when does the value of the features a new architecture offers become greater than the value of maintaining the legacy applications of old architecture?
There have already been lots of better architectures, but the improvements weren't sufficient offset the advantage being able to support the legacy applications.
You may be seeing that value proposition changing already, though. As phones, netbooks, game consoles, etc. accrue more of the applications and functions once reserved for desktops and servers, they reduce the value of the old architecture. But that's not really one architecture replacing another as a drop-in replacement, that's more of a change of paradigm - the action is moving somewhere else.
Any OS requiring >90% of configuration changes to be made in a GUI does not count as UNIX, in my book.
I'll grant you that OS X is UNIX-certified, but OS X is _not_ SVR4 UNIX.
So what? Neither is Linux, and neither was the original SunOS. In fact, if you look at the early Linux distros like SLS or Slackware, they basically emulated SunOS, which meant that the file layouts, init scripts and command syntaxes were much more BSD-like than SysV like.
Anyway, it's been a long time since SVR4 was released - 1990. I can guarantee that at this point, AIX, HP-UX and Solaris have all diverged a long, long way from the original SVR4, not to mention from each other. It's doubtful much original SVR4 code remains in any of them. Given that OS X conforms to the same standards as any of those do, I'm not sure why you think it's ancestry is any kind of significant.
Which makes no sense. Why would you pay the Apple tax for a pretty face on X11, xterm and emacs when you can get the same thing from a Linux machine (or even an OpenSolaris PC, if you're a traditionalist) for probably half the price ?
Well, because not only do I get my X11, xterm and emacs, I also get my MS Office, Lotus Notes, Aventail Connect, Mobility Client, Sametime, RDC and other productivity apps that I need to function in a business environment I'm not gonna get on Solaris or Linux. That doesn't even count the apps like iTunes, Quicktime, VLC, etc. The point is, I can use it as a Unix workstation, and I can also use it as business/consumer laptop.
Also, running Solaris or Linux is going to be every bit as much of a battle, if not more so, as running Windows, requiring constant tweaking and configuration to get your hardware recognized (if you can) and getting all your applications to play together nice. Yes, it *does* Just Work. As I happen to be an actual sysadmin in a shop with over 1700 Solaris, HP, AIX and Linux boxes, I already have enough problems without going out my way to create more for myself.
And no, Cygwin does not do it just as well. The only thing Cygwin gives you is all of the problems of Window, with an additional layer of aggravation. Cygwin is what finally drove me over the edge to get a Mac in the first place. Just try doing cut and paste between your Windows productivity apps and your X or bash shell environments in Cygwin, and you'll find out fast. On a Mac your Unix and productivity environments are integrated seamlessly.
I've been a Linux/Unix admin for 12 years and as far as being a unix goes, even Cygwin does a better job than OS X of acting the way Unix users expect.
ROFLMAO!! Well, I've been a unix admin since 1992 - and it was Cygwin that finally drove me off of Windows on to the Mac....
Which says zero about whether or not they can (or are) running them like they would they Solaris, HP UX, AIX, or anything else machines. I'd be more than willing to bet that they're "adminning" them just like any other Mac user would - ie: mostly through the GUI.
Well, you don't admin an AIX box like Solaris box like an HP box. There's no smitty on Solaris or SAM on AIX. If you're saying that OS X is different from the others, sure. But not really so much different from them than they are from each other. A Solaris admin isn't going to be any more at sea learning to admin an OS X box than he would learning AIX or Linux. It's a difference without a distinction.
The antitrust problems are far too large. Especially in light of the massive "too big to fail" problems we've seen in other industries. The computer tech industry cannot be allowed to put this many eggs in so few baskets.
What antitrust problem? The alternative is that Sun goes out of business.
Based on their comments so far, Solaris will mostly be living on x86, AIX will live on Power, and IBM will turn to third parties for legacy Sparc support. I think Solaris will survive, as a commodity offering. But this is probably the death-knell for Sparc.
Somehow, I don't see much of Solaris on Power. If there had been any customer demand for it, either IBM or Sun would have provided it by now. Sun would have been happy to sell IBM an OS, and IBM would have been happy to sell Sun some chips. Neither one of them did it, which inclines me to believe there wasn't enough customer interest for it to be profitable.
My guess is that Solaris will become a commodity offering primarily on x86. AIX will remain the premium offering on Power. Over time, I'd expect most of Solaris's most compelling features will wind up getting migrated to AIX. The statements made on the matter so far tend to back that up.
Your typical UNIX admin will be lost at sea, trying to run a Mac like his Solaris or HP UX machines.
I don't know about that. The last time I was at a Sun seminar, at least a third of the attendees had MacBooks. Including this one.
That's true. In fact, every time I've ever spent money on a top-of-the-line computer, I've generally found it was overkill, or the additional features were drawbacks rather than assets. I had a MacBook, and liked it so well I got a MacBook Pro. Turns out that while the MBP is technically the nicer computer, it's also a larger, heavier and hotter one. The result being that the MacBook remained my main computer, and the MPB being the backup. The lesson being that sometimes, all the glittery features look better in the store window than they do after you get the thing home. Realistically, the MacBook already met all of my needs. These days, I generally buy refurbs and budget models.
That's true. I was checking out prices for an upgrade from Crucial for a MacBook Pro. To my surprise, I found that just ordering the configuration I wanted from Apple would be cheaper.
Disk prices, on the other hand....
Yeah, I'm having a little trouble believing that's going to be an adequate space-craft for going to Mars. For a several day trip to the moon, ok - but being bottled up in that thing for 2-3 years? And where are you going to store several years worth of supplies in there?
I think somebody is smoking something.
Some interesting info I picked up doing some research on who was hiring whom, and where. Here's a short list of companies in our industry, and the number of H1-B's they hired in 2008.
Microsoft: 4437
IBM: 1413
Hewlett-Packard: 520
Apple Computer: 291
You tell me - which of these companies has produced the most innovative products over the last decade? By the way - unlike the other three, Apple doesn't offshore their product development - it's all done in Cupertino, Ca. Also, when you call their tech support, you'll reliably get connected with someone who speaks English.
If you've been using Solaris on x64 and don't want to throw out all your hardware, then Linux is probably your only migration path.
Actually, my guess is that x64 will be Solaris's new home, AIX will stay on Power, and Sparc will go bye-bye (it was most probably doomed eventually, anyway). I'm guessing Solaris will be the commodity product, and AIX will be the premium product. Over time, you'll see AIX absorb the best features of Solaris. Somehow, I doubt you'll ever see Solaris on Power, or AIX on Intel, let alone Sparc.
I hope IBM does not buy Sun because IBM would almost certainly flush Solaris down the toilet.
I doubt that. I expect Solaris and AIX would eventually be merged, but it would likely be an incremental process that wouldn't be completed for a long, long time. Consider how many years it took them to merge the i and the p series hardware platforms.