There are some jobs that Mainframes are better at.
There are times when record-oriented I/O (rather than character oriented) makes more sense. (Just not very often)
All kidding aside, there are some things that mainframes excel at:
Single Thread Performance - Some tasks CANNOT be easily subdivided. While a sort may be subdivided, merging all of the little sorted files is still a singly-threaded task; Balancing B-Trees in a DataBase key space is closely related (which is one of the reasons that adding a new row to a database is just about the most expensive single operation you can perform).
I/O Bandwidth - In order to keep the above fed, the I/O model takes no prisoners (and cuts few, if any, corners financially) to move data in and out of main memory.
I/O Connectivity - All of the above bandwidth doesn't do you much good if you only remove the chokepoint for a limited set of devices, so a mainframe makes sure that there are few (if any) limitations on I/O connectivity with the excellent bandwidth.
IBM's channel architecture (originally seen on the S/360) was mimicked by Xerox (Sigma Series) as well as Sperry-UNIVAC (in the 1100/40 and later systems). This architecture, while best for record-oriented I/O, did it's utmost to move the data where it was needed in order to keep the processor fed.
When CPUs exceeded I/O speeds by a huge margin (happening with the 7090s, for instance) the advantage of having multiple programs running simultaneously started to make sense.
BTW- an early OS on the 709/7090 was CTSS - the Compatible Time Sharing System. Much that was implemented there ended up in VM/CMS.
Actually, I think one of the Remington-Rand systems (like the 1101, for Project 13) had an early effort at an operating system.
There was also the IBM 1401, IBM 7090 in the same era.
Most of the "Operating Systems" of that era were not that much more functional than CP/M-80, delivering an ability to to handle I/O as a reasonably abstract call w/o needing to know what the I/O addresses were and writing the necessary channel program.
Beyond the "Monitor" routines (for these I/O services) were additional layers to load in programs from the specified media (early JCL).
You'll need someone a bit older than me (46yo) who dates back to the days when programmers were still called "logicians".
My wife's one great aunt is 95+ and, during the 1920s, held a job AS a COMPUTER. Sheesh, times change. (In those days, apparently I/O was handled by the boys carrying the ledgers to/from the shelves.)
"When I was your age, we didn't have none of these fancy graphics you kids have, no, if we wanted to see pictures, we ran jobs out to the card punch and held the deck up to the light!"
IBM can claim to support Linux along a HUGE spectrum of hardware- from the Teeny wristwatch all the way up to their BFI (Big Iron).
The bragging rights have gotta be worth something, too, when trying to embarass the guys w/ NT (or W2K)...
"Nyah, Nyah! You can't get this small, can you now?"
"Hey! No wonder I can't have a mid-life crisis!
Having a Life is a pre-requisite!"
Actaully, if you are talking about massive transaction processing, the mainframes and other large systems (like the AS/400) are the best at what they do, and are actually rather cost-efficient. PC-style hardware has fairly awful I/O performance, which is what really matters for the big iron. Processor power is needed more for application serving, etc.. You can do a lot with big pipes. Sun systems have had great I/O capabilities for a while now, even with slower processors than PC equivalents, and AS/400 and S/390 go far beyond that. Not to mention that the reliability numbers on a 'frame are astounding... but when you a have a bunch of processors that do nothing but handle error recovery, it's no wonder why you don't see problems.
Actually, there's a good reason for Mainframes to still exist- I ran across someone (a VP at a major corporation) who thought that an "empty" 48xCPU Tandem cluster could beat a loaded-down UNIVAC 1100/80 1x1. The UNIVAC still came out ahead by (IIRC) about 20:1.
Mainframes excel at single thread performance- when dealing with a database, there are some phases that MUST be done single thread (which is why "append new row" is the most expensive operation in a DBMS); For instance, for a sort operation you can split up the sort process across all of the CPUs you have but there is still a merge phase that MUST be single threaded.
Likewise, a mainframe takes no prisoners in providing the maximum I/O bandwidth and connectiviy (disk farms, folks...).
Mind you, I still think machines that can use 120VAC are great, but I'd _love_ to see some more S/390s on eBay for approx $1K- though I'm thinking that my electric meter will explode...
PS:... Currently if someone has an excessive information amount of information about me and/or is tracking me then they are stalking me. Your post seems to want to make stalking a legal right. Whatever.
Good point. Unfortunately there is no shortage of pr1cks in the world who get pleasure from irritating others. Of course, linked to financial information (hey, this helps out those who "steal identities") a stalker will be able to better choose their victims. There are those, however, who use the "DYFS" (youth & family) organizations to pin down their victims since there's no cost to such anonymous denunciations. Which leads to...
PPS: Your many eyes watching theory of keeping peace, was a hallmark of communism in its heydey. Citizens were encouraged to spy on each other and weekly denouncements were held in local meetings. This lead to the tyranny of the majority opinion on those of minorities. It is far easier to enforce conformity when all deviation is available for public consumption. How many people would be actively gay if all it took was a website lookup to determine their sexual preference? Even better how many Wiccans are Satan worshippers would practice their religion of their religious preference was available for all to view?
Don't forget that it works the other way too. There are Christians & Jews being targetted as well- even though the most egregious breaches of privacy have occurred in the "Abortion" issue where Doctors had their names and addresses broadcast so that some deranged in-duh-vidual could perform retro-active contraception... The biggest problem is that the check-and-balance against jackals (i.e. "duelling") is gone and the jackals do not need to declare themselves. OK- make information free to be seen (and, when someone LOOKS at my information, I get EXACLY THE SAME KIND OF INFORMATION ABOUT THEM) but make it far more difficult to be acted upon.
Consider information access on my life by a party as a "declaration of ill intent" so that, should I meet some misadventure, ANYONE who has accessed my personal information is automatically a prime suspect, and acts as an indication of premeditation. (This makes giving such information away far more dangerous- since you accessed it, you're automatically the murderer, for instance, and anyone who actually DOES the act can get off...)
(Heck, threatening e-mail should be treated the same way- if a threatened person comes up dead, the person sending the threat should be charged with premeditated murder...)
Yes, in some areas, information should be free- but either you get what you paid for or you will pay for what you get...
BTW, Americans who try to repel an attack or a robbery using a gun are more likely to wind up dead than those who don't. This is a fact. Check your own government's statistics if you don't believe it.
There's a lot of evidence out there that refutes that, such as the fact that usually the statictics used compare people who kill the attacker against those who are killed by the attacker. They don't look at the attackers who are scared off by the person just wielding the gun, which is a rather significant number (Justice dept. estimates that self defensive usages of firearms occur between 1.5 and 2.5 million times anually.) Of course, the media never reports on people saved by having a gun, except occasionally in the fkyspeck of the police blotter section.
An interesting observation: I'm originally from the New York City metro area and have lived in Texas for a bit; I came to the conclusion that freer access to firearms makes politeness an evolutionary advantage. But, really, yes, a robbery victim is at a disadvantage in dealing with an assailant- but, consider a mugging in TX vs NYC: OK, the mugger has the drop on the victim, the victom cannot draw without being shot- but this does not stop bystanders from going "woohoo! target practice time!" and proceed to step into the fray. In NYC, this can't happen; Nobody wants to get involved. If we can come up with a reasonable way to make "good" social behavior a long-term evolutionary advantage (people behave a lot better when their lives may be on the line) then civilization will progress. One must realize that guns, data, money are all usable as weapons. Those who have them want to hoard these resources and keep anyone else from acquiring them...
There are some folks I'd prefer privacy from- Mostly my wife's ex-husband and his family. There are too many supra-constitutional organizations that make wonderful means of harassmant- all without consequence for the persecutor!
IBM are unquestionably looking at Linux as a low to medium-end replacement for AIX. They've ported most (if not all) their Java tools over, they have TWO Java compilers (Jikes & IBM JDK), they've ported a large chunk of JFS, and then there's their DB/2 port, their Application Server port, their work with Apache and their ports of Linux to IBM mainframe systems.
Actually, _I_ think (IMHO) that IBM sees a Linux entry server/workstation market as working TOWARDS selling AIX boxes- though this may backfire.
Consider- when you run out of steam w/ an NT box (you're never far from empty running NT) your NT-based application CAN'T migrate to, for instance, an S/390. If you're running Linux on the Desktop (or on servers) you DO have a choice- AIX. I've heard stories of GNOME and KDE ported to AIX, so AIX is a useful place to go, and so, Linux can help customers started on the path to AIX (this also works AGAINST AIX since there's also Tru64, Solaris, etc).
I administer AIX boxes for a living and I've managed to sneak in some NetFinickies as Linux servers too. AIX is far more tolerant of hardware changes (like adding/removing disks from a SCSI bus) than I would EVER have believed before. (The magic incantation is "cfgmgr".) I can see that AIX scales in areas that Linux won't. On a 43P it's a wash 'tween Linux and AIX; but, on an F50 you really want AIX (what with the hotswap drives...). I doubt that IBM will throw in all of the wonderful goodies they've based AIX on into Linux- but what they're throwing in, while not everything, is _enough_ to make me happier (JFS and LVM, wooo-hooo!) so "I am not entirely displeased". Please note that I _like_ AIX for some stuff, Linux for others. If I could have some of the Lotus apps that the PTB have made de regieur (sp?) run native on a Linux desktop I can be done with Windoze.
BTW, my LILO has three labels: win, lose, draw.
WIN: Linux
LOSE: Windoze
DRAW: Backup copy of Linux
My son suggest the use of the good, the bad and the ugly.
"You are the MS-DOS of Evil: Only 640K, not even enough"
Actually, I was just using the Kernel as an example. But what irritates me is this notion that "we will use the free/GPL software, include it, write tools to interact with it, but we will not support it in any other ways".
Actually, hasn't IBM already provided a Journaling FileSystem for Linux with a Logical Volume Manager on the way? I've installed RH 6.1 on an IBM NetFinicky 5500 (OK, so it ain't finicky w/ Linux in it's belly) and the ServeRAID controller is known to Linux. It sure looks like somebody at IBM did that.
And wasn't it IBM that provided patches to run Linux on the S/390? (Gawd, I keep watching eBay- I've seen some S/390s up there...)
IBM seems to have learned some humility. It seems that teaching BG@M$ the same lesson is gonna take more effort...
IBM is in the business of making money (strangely enough). I think this is great, but how does this further their business plan? Or is it more like trying to erode the market share of competitors?
IBM has moved away from being a "mere" hardware provider into a "service provider" since that's where the money really is. Look carefully: IBM has embraced "open" technologies recently- which helps them a lot! Java provides an environment where the same program (w/o recompilation!) will work on darn near everything they sell- and, with experience on this platform, can sell services AS WELL AS HARDWARE. Linux provides a consistent platform (kinda like Java, but at a lower level) that works the same everywhere, so, knowledge gained in one area can be applied elsewhere.
It is very likely that IBM isn't interested in "owning" Java or Linux (which, given some history, has killed stuff off before) but can make plenty of money renting out their knowledge of these technologies- which is what service is about.
Java and Linux provide something that the services folks at IBM must've been salivating for over the last umpteen years: a level playing field they can compete in. Hey, given Linux, an IBM geek can work on ANY SYSTEM RUNNING IT- whether it's IBM's, Sun's, Compaq's or whoever. The money seems to be in building up useful applications on top of the OS. Now if only they'd beat somebody at Lotus over the non-portability of Notes, 123, etc...
I would've found it far more interesting if the IOC was suing NSI for selling these names (especially since they're retaining the "ownership" of the names and hence the liability).
Of course, if DC-X had been a manned vehicle it still would have been safe for the crew when a leg failed to deploy. They'd have just given themselves a little more altitude over their bit of desert and bailed out.
There has been a lot of discussion w/r/t failure modes for a VTVL (vs. the Shuttle, a VTHL); If the DC-X had been crewed (or had an override capability) it could've hovered just above the ground until empty and then fallen- when there was too little propellant to cause a problem. Of course, if none of the engines light, well, that's kind of uncomfortable too, though I imagine some kind of special propellant dump would be needed (then the fuel tanks become the "crush zone"). See the UseNet group sci.space.tech (which I suspect will be buzzing pretty heavily today...).
I would think that pushing for IE to be owned by NanoSoft (the OS company) vs. being owned by Millisoft (the Application company) is, in effect, cheating.
This'd yank it away from some Mac users- which would not be very popular. If customers had to BUY a copy of IE (regardless of platform) well, that makes it easier for other browsers (like Netscape) to compete.
Competition exists to keep ANYBODY from becoming complacent. Given some of the stuff we've been seeing from Netscape nowadays (NS 6+ comes to mind) I think they could use some challenges. Just because IE can be a pain in the butt to use doesn't mean it needs to be duct-taped to the Windoze OS.
When M$ first embarked on an effort to kill off Netscape, this marked a threat against all other desktoppable OSes (Dec Unix, SGI Irix, Solaris, Slolaris, AIX and even Linux and *BSD) since, if Netscape died off, it'd sound a death-knell for Unix systems. I did not like that they wanted to cut out the "convenience" of OS choice...
If I remember aright, this was mentioned, what, 2 years ago? When Intel mentioned that they wuz gonna discontinue manufacturing the Alpha?
On top of that, stories abound about how antique the Alpha's chip fab technology was.
So...
...Wanna bet that IBM doesn't mind making the chip? Especially if they're looking at cross-licensing some stuff? (Heck, how many of IBM's own RISC patents are part of the Alpha anyway?)
C'mon, IBM's got some cool silicon of their own. I would not be surprised if IBM itself decides to start ANOTHER line of machines based on the Alpha (RS/7000 anybody?)...
Naw... It's more likely that IBM is having some fun and keeping the chip foundries cooking and just irritating Intel as much as they're annoying Sun...
QNX doesn't have a business model built on security. Hmmm... I worked on some QNX boxes 6-7 years ago. They were quite secure- at least when it came to the licensing mechanism. It was way too paranoid. It was always entertaining when you tried to do a make... ...and had to wait for your turn at the license.
*SIGH*
Mind you, the QNX people are pretty aggressive w/r/t defending their product. It's just that, if there's a problem in the TCP/IP package, well, you had to KYBG until the patch arrived...
As soon as we have zero tolerance for speeding (considering that turnpike tickets are timestamped) the first politician who gets nailed will kill the process.
On another note, though, I worry that the speed control ("cruise control") will have an upper limit it can be set at. Heck, I'm surprised it hasn't already been tried...
On YET _another_ note, the latest cars which know the road they're on (thank you GPS) my eventually whine at you anytime you exceed the posted limit. If all cars were required to have this (and you spend more only for the display) I suspect that the ROM chips'd be the first to go...
I can just imagine... Mamas & Poppas (I think) doing "Slow Down, you move too fast..." (Hmmmm... a mainstream application for MP3s!)
And if you took much of the above seriously, you are in WAY worse shape than me.
But the plow comes first- so that we can put food into that can. It can be argued that food generation and distribution technology is up there with waste collection and relocation technology as the two infrastructures necessary to have a civilization.
We needed the plow in order to have farmering as a specialization; Without it, there can be NO specialization.
OK, so if we get decent nanotechnology it all changes, but that will force some kind of a phase change. If hate still exists by then, we're all toast...
OK, I admit to having been influenced by James Burke's "Connections"...
I worked with SCADA systems where we had to mount the computer within a metal cabinet with a hermetically sealed door (which was bolted down in, IIRC, 4 places).
While these puppies can't be cheap, there must be a mass-market (or close to mass) considering that the cable companies and power companies need these.
And, hey, my experiences were 20 years ago.
These cabinets would've been big enough to handle PCs, BTW, though I'd worry about heat distribution (you're not gonna want to use a P-III, Athlon, Alpha or whatnot...).
Of course, you could go into business building these puppies in such a way that the CPU heat-sinks directly to the case...
I've seen his Heineken ads on TBS (TNT?) and thought they were a hoot.
I've also thought that a special film that ONLY consisted of his briefings to the various incarnations (is he a Time Lord or WHAT) of James Bond would be wonderful- especially for techies to watch. His dry delivery was too good for words.
I just hope that the other car wasn't driven by John Cleese, looking for a promotion:-):-):-)
Hopefully Cleese will be able to carry the load in the future- but it can't help him that we've got such high expectations for subtle wit...
The old UNIVAC 1108 sold a *lot* of copies before UNIVAC's mgmt (Rand? Remington?) realized there actually was a demand for computers.
So, they rolled out the 1106 computer for less than the cost of the 1108 (the development costs for which had already been amortized) which only had a clock-card (and badges) different between the two machines (some time later the 1106's were their own machines, but the first cut was a downgraded 1108).
If you look at IBM's licensing issues for ADSM (on AIX/NT, maybe MVS) it seems that you can license it w/o paying for it- which is, in it's own way, true. If you've exceeded the nominal license, however, you may have problems getting serviced...
I don't think companies with their businesses dependant on these machines will be in a hurry to exceed their service contracts...
Ya gets what ya pays for- but you also pay for whatcha get...
Consider the stories of how IBM came to embrace Apache as the core technology of WebSphere- rather than having Domino Go as core...
I've heard that some folks w/i IBM didn't like the Domino Go webserver they were using, so they (sneakily?) replaced it w/ Apache. Executives noticed the improvements in performance and wanted to know how they got Domino Go to run so fast...
20 years ago I'd never have anything to do with IBM- Yes, there was arrogance, but...
The key difference between IBM then and M$ now is that IBM put more effort into making things work.
With many of the shifts that have occurred, IBM's leadership has been humbled...
...which is why it's easier to deal with 'em nowadays. Just remember that IBM is opportunistic- but then, they had to learn how (something that AT&T always failed at when it came to computers) which is what competition is about.
Mainframes aren't dead for three important reasons:
Maximum ("take no prisoners") single-thread performance;
Maximum I/O bandwidth; and
Maximum I/O connectivity.
There are some large jobs (like the merge phase of a sort) that MUST be performed as a single-thread operation.
Dealing with databases (and, especially, key/index management) that requires serious I/O bandwidth along with that single-thread performance.
Somehow I doubt that Linux will ever be a primary OS for an S/390 sysplex- but it could happen.
I'd figure that the VM version would be most likely (though VM tries to mimic bare metal anyway) but, AFAIK, there are folks inside IBM that want VM to evaporate (like it's gonna happen).
I could see Linux living within a VM allowing a system to handle MVS, VM/CMS and Unix applications all at the same time...
Of course, this kind of facility makes time-to-market for WebSphere App Server and brethren that much shorter...
I think you're forgetting the "glue logic" that keeps BeOS from being cleanly ported.
When there are closed sections of the box, it's more difficult to take advantage of......which is one reason that Linux has taken longer to gain a foothold on Mac hardware (and the open-source mechanism allows distribution to other free OS's but BeOS finds it needs to do it in a "clean room" environment to retain their copyrights- rightly or wrongly).
Seriously, consider that IBM's release of specs for PowerPC-based motherboards (which includes the artwork...) will make G4 technology (with documented glue logic) more available for Linux-o-philes. Heck, my main system at home is 4+ years old - it's an AMD 5x86-133; I haven't upgraded it since I didn't consider a Pentium as an upgrade path- I wanted an Alpha or a PowerPC (and I had expected cheap CHRP MBs to become available as "commodity parts").
Apple (apparently) did not want to allow for cloning since it'd reduce their H/W profit margins to (effectively) zero- which Steve Jobs wanted to retain. Against BeOS (much less Linux or FreeBSD) the MacOS would show it's senility on open hardware- so there needed to be a software margin too.
Now all I want is to get some PPC CHRP motherboards cheap...
The largest problem with what Mrs. Dole is asking for is the fact that she wants libraries to censor both children and adults.
Agreed. *THIS* is a problem. Of course, Libraries are already segregated by age - at least in terms of what a person may borrow (I'm using the NY Public Library as a model here......am I obsolete already?).
A library, however, is a public space. My main argument is that there is little/no reason for filtering AS LONG AS A BROWSER REALIZES THAT THIS IS BEING DONE IN A PUBLIC PLACE AND PRIVACY IS NOT POSSIBLE. If an activity belongs in a bedroom, well, don't view the streaming video in the library unless you don't mind having all of your neighbors watching over your shoulder. This is the core of my "position" (albeit non-missionary).
OK, so I'm a "compassionate" conservative. Folks who have raised children through to adulthood will tend in this direction- though is it mainly to protect one's own bloodline? BTSOOM! But I want my children to succeed...
A teen-age daughter wears out her father when she's dating since she always seems to pick a boyfriend 3 (or more) steps below her on the evolutionary ladder. Mothers constantly fret that they haven't set aside enough money to bail out their teen-age sons...
So, with that background provided, let's wade on in...
Values are important- but I don't want my children to automatically salute an authority figure and I'd like them to think for themselves. That doesn't stop me from wanting to implant certain (survival linked) prejudices:
Race is irrelevant. I someone else can put up with me, I can put up with them, regardless of race, color, creed, whatever. Discovering that one's spouse's ex-in-laws instilled a sense of racism in one's stepchildren is an appalling thing to experience.
Drugs (whose truth on the web?) - Hey, I was introduced to MJ in college 25+ years ago. It was interesting. Once. Maybe I'm wired funny but it wasn't all _that_ interesting. I guess I needed to get a life that I hated.
Sex can kill, these days. Granted, it can be argued that diseases won't jump between species (my daughter's boyfriends and her) but the reality is, for a father, far more frightening. Additionally, unless one's spouse is interested in knowing about differing positions there's not much point. Why bother? Porn isn't all that harmful except that it often gives the wrong message, like "When she says NO it really means YES"- and one doesn't want to hear about your daughter being date-raped by a guy who's viewed the same material YOU like.
Bombs can be considered evolution in action. It's also stupid. Knowledge is fine but it is illegal to act on it. A lot of things are that way. In all seriousness, sure, bomb-making information isn't all _that_ harmful since many of the idiots who'll act on it will blow themselves up- or get caught and then executed.
Violence is an ambiguous item. There are times where violence is called for- after all, War has existed (and been tolerated by God) because it performed a useful function (if you've looked at history, it has tended to take down corrupt leaderships). In this day of a more unified world we no longer have it as a useful check-and-balance. Likewise, on an individual basis, it could be argued that duelling should never have been outlawed (though it should be confined to principals and not use seconds). Duelling could function as another check-and-balance against corruption on an individual level and has the side effect of rendering politeness as an evolutionary advantage.
So, I've exposed (not XXX-posed:-) some of my thoughts, of which (I am sure) many will disagree, and here is the key to civilization:
Tolerance is required. Approval is NOT required.
I tolerate people with other opinions and lifestyles; I am no more required to approve their lifestyles than they are of mine. Don't try too hard to sell me (which is an expression of intolerance) any more than I'll try to sell you.
No matter how much I'd like things to be different they won't be.
The bottom line? A library is a public place. There should be no privacy there. There should also be no censorship, either. There are many who would restrict our sources of information, but we must keep them open. Libraries tie us together as a civilization since they maintain the inventory of human knowledge- even if some of that knowledge is ugly.
Knowledge is power. Power provides freedom to choose.
Don't forget that politicians would love us all to be illiterate- then we could be more easily manipulated.
Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. Those who DO study history will be able to recognize that they are repeating it- even if they can't do anything about it.
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There are times when record-oriented I/O (rather than character oriented) makes more sense. (Just not very often)
All kidding aside, there are some things that mainframes excel at:
IBM's channel architecture (originally seen on the S/360) was mimicked by Xerox (Sigma Series) as well as Sperry-UNIVAC (in the 1100/40 and later systems). This architecture, while best for record-oriented I/O, did it's utmost to move the data where it was needed in order to keep the processor fed.
When CPUs exceeded I/O speeds by a huge margin (happening with the 7090s, for instance) the advantage of having multiple programs running simultaneously started to make sense.
BTW- an early OS on the 709/7090 was CTSS - the Compatible Time Sharing System. Much that was implemented there ended up in VM/CMS.
There was also the IBM 1401, IBM 7090 in the same era.
Most of the "Operating Systems" of that era were not that much more functional than CP/M-80, delivering an ability to to handle I/O as a reasonably abstract call w/o needing to know what the I/O addresses were and writing the necessary channel program.
Beyond the "Monitor" routines (for these I/O services) were additional layers to load in programs from the specified media (early JCL).
You'll need someone a bit older than me (46yo) who dates back to the days when programmers were still called "logicians".
My wife's one great aunt is 95+ and, during the 1920s, held a job AS a COMPUTER. Sheesh, times change. (In those days, apparently I/O was handled by the boys carrying the ledgers to/from the shelves.)
"When I was your age, we didn't have none of these fancy graphics you kids have, no, if we wanted to see pictures, we ran jobs out to the card punch and held the deck up to the light!"
Sure, it's a proof of concept, but think:
IBM can claim to support Linux along a HUGE spectrum of hardware- from the Teeny wristwatch all the way up to their BFI (Big Iron).
The bragging rights have gotta be worth something, too, when trying to embarass the guys w/ NT (or W2K)...
"Nyah, Nyah! You can't get this small, can you now?"
"Hey! No wonder I can't have a mid-life crisis!
Having a Life is a pre-requisite!"
Actually, there's a good reason for Mainframes to still exist- I ran across someone (a VP at a major corporation) who thought that an "empty" 48xCPU Tandem cluster could beat a loaded-down UNIVAC 1100/80 1x1. The UNIVAC still came out ahead by (IIRC) about 20:1.
Mainframes excel at single thread performance- when dealing with a database, there are some phases that MUST be done single thread (which is why "append new row" is the most expensive operation in a DBMS); For instance, for a sort operation you can split up the sort process across all of the CPUs you have but there is still a merge phase that MUST be single threaded.
Likewise, a mainframe takes no prisoners in providing the maximum I/O bandwidth and connectiviy (disk farms, folks...).
Mind you, I still think machines that can use 120VAC are great, but I'd _love_ to see some more S/390s on eBay for approx $1K- though I'm thinking that my electric meter will explode...
PS:... Currently if someone has an excessive information amount of information about me and/or is tracking me then they are stalking me. Your post seems to want to make stalking a legal right. Whatever.
Good point. Unfortunately there is no shortage of pr1cks in the world who get pleasure from irritating others.
Of course, linked to financial information (hey, this helps out those who "steal identities") a stalker will be able to better choose their victims.
There are those, however, who use the "DYFS" (youth & family) organizations to pin down their victims since there's no cost to such anonymous denunciations. Which leads to...
PPS: Your many eyes watching theory of keeping peace, was a hallmark of communism in its heydey. Citizens were encouraged to spy on each other and weekly denouncements were held in local meetings. This lead to the tyranny of the majority opinion on those of minorities. It is far easier to enforce conformity when all deviation is available for public consumption. How many people would be actively gay if all it took was a website lookup to determine their sexual preference? Even better how many Wiccans are Satan worshippers would practice their religion of their religious preference was available for all to view?
Don't forget that it works the other way too. There are Christians & Jews being targetted as well- even though the most egregious breaches of privacy have occurred in the "Abortion" issue where Doctors had their names and addresses broadcast so that some deranged in-duh-vidual could perform retro-active contraception...
The biggest problem is that the check-and-balance against jackals (i.e. "duelling") is gone and the jackals do not need to declare themselves.
OK- make information free to be seen (and, when someone LOOKS at my information, I get EXACLY THE SAME KIND OF INFORMATION ABOUT THEM) but make it far more difficult to be acted upon.
Consider information access on my life by a party as a "declaration of ill intent" so that, should I meet some misadventure, ANYONE who has accessed my personal information is automatically a prime suspect, and acts as an indication of premeditation. (This makes giving such information away far more dangerous- since you accessed it, you're automatically the murderer, for instance, and anyone who actually DOES the act can get off...)
(Heck, threatening e-mail should be treated the same way- if a threatened person comes up dead, the person sending the threat should be charged with premeditated murder...)
Yes, in some areas, information should be free- but either you get what you paid for or you will pay for what you get...
BTW, Americans who try to repel an attack or a robbery using a gun are more likely to wind up dead than those who don't. This is a fact. Check your own government's statistics if you don't believe it.
There's a lot of evidence out there that refutes that, such as the fact that usually the statictics used compare people who kill the attacker against those who are killed by the attacker. They don't look at the attackers who are scared off by the person just wielding the gun, which is a rather significant number (Justice dept. estimates that self defensive usages of firearms occur between 1.5 and 2.5 million times anually.) Of course, the media never reports on people saved by having a gun, except occasionally in the fkyspeck of the police blotter section.
An interesting observation:
I'm originally from the New York City metro area and have lived in Texas for a bit; I came to the conclusion that freer access to firearms makes politeness an evolutionary advantage.
But, really, yes, a robbery victim is at a disadvantage in dealing with an assailant- but, consider a mugging in TX vs NYC: OK, the mugger has the drop on the victim, the victom cannot draw without being shot- but this does not stop bystanders from going "woohoo! target practice time!" and proceed to step into the fray. In NYC, this can't happen; Nobody wants to get involved.
If we can come up with a reasonable way to make "good" social behavior a long-term evolutionary advantage (people behave a lot better when their lives may be on the line) then civilization will progress.
One must realize that guns, data, money are all usable as weapons. Those who have them want to hoard these resources and keep anyone else from acquiring them...
There are some folks I'd prefer privacy from- Mostly my wife's ex-husband and his family. There are too many supra-constitutional organizations that make wonderful means of harassmant- all without consequence for the persecutor!
Actually, _I_ think (IMHO) that IBM sees a Linux entry server/workstation market as working TOWARDS selling AIX boxes- though this may backfire.
Consider- when you run out of steam w/ an NT box (you're never far from empty running NT) your NT-based application CAN'T migrate to, for instance, an S/390. If you're running Linux on the Desktop (or on servers) you DO have a choice- AIX. I've heard stories of GNOME and KDE ported to AIX, so AIX is a useful place to go, and so, Linux can help customers started on the path to AIX (this also works AGAINST AIX since there's also Tru64, Solaris, etc).
I administer AIX boxes for a living and I've managed to sneak in some NetFinickies as Linux servers too. AIX is far more tolerant of hardware changes (like adding/removing disks from a SCSI bus) than I would EVER have believed before. (The magic incantation is "cfgmgr".) I can see that AIX scales in areas that Linux won't. On a 43P it's a wash 'tween Linux and AIX; but, on an F50 you really want AIX (what with the hotswap drives...). I doubt that IBM will throw in all of the wonderful goodies they've based AIX on into Linux- but what they're throwing in, while not everything, is _enough_ to make me happier (JFS and LVM, wooo-hooo!) so "I am not entirely displeased".
Please note that I _like_ AIX for some stuff, Linux for others. If I could have some of the Lotus apps that the PTB have made de regieur (sp?) run native on a Linux desktop I can be done with Windoze.
BTW, my LILO has three labels: win, lose, draw.
My son suggest the use of the good, the bad and the ugly.
"You are the MS-DOS of Evil: Only 640K, not even enough"
Actually, I was just using the Kernel as an example. But what irritates me is this notion that "we will use the free/GPL software, include it, write tools to interact with it, but we will not support it in any other ways".
Actually, hasn't IBM already provided a Journaling FileSystem for Linux with a Logical Volume Manager on the way?
I've installed RH 6.1 on an IBM NetFinicky 5500 (OK, so it ain't finicky w/ Linux in it's belly) and the ServeRAID controller is known to Linux. It sure looks like somebody at IBM did that.
And wasn't it IBM that provided patches to run Linux on the S/390? (Gawd, I keep watching eBay- I've seen some S/390s up there...)
IBM seems to have learned some humility. It seems that teaching BG@M$ the same lesson is gonna take more effort...
IBM is in the business of making money (strangely enough). I think this is great, but how does this further their business plan? Or is it more like trying to erode the market share of competitors?
IBM has moved away from being a "mere" hardware provider into a "service provider" since that's where the money really is.
Look carefully: IBM has embraced "open" technologies recently- which helps them a lot!
Java provides an environment where the same program (w/o recompilation!) will work on darn near everything they sell- and, with experience on this platform, can sell services AS WELL AS HARDWARE.
Linux provides a consistent platform (kinda like Java, but at a lower level) that works the same everywhere, so, knowledge gained in one area can be applied elsewhere.
It is very likely that IBM isn't interested in "owning" Java or Linux (which, given some history, has killed stuff off before) but can make plenty of money renting out their knowledge of these technologies- which is what service is about.
Java and Linux provide something that the services folks at IBM must've been salivating for over the last umpteen years: a level playing field they can compete in.
Hey, given Linux, an IBM geek can work on ANY SYSTEM RUNNING IT- whether it's IBM's, Sun's, Compaq's or whoever. The money seems to be in building up useful applications on top of the OS.
Now if only they'd beat somebody at Lotus over the non-portability of Notes, 123, etc...
I would've found it far more interesting if the IOC was suing NSI for selling these names (especially since they're retaining the "ownership" of the names and hence the liability).
There has been a lot of discussion w/r/t failure modes for a VTVL (vs. the Shuttle, a VTHL); If the DC-X had been crewed (or had an override capability) it could've hovered just above the ground until empty and then fallen- when there was too little propellant to cause a problem.
Of course, if none of the engines light, well, that's kind of uncomfortable too, though I imagine some kind of special propellant dump would be needed (then the fuel tanks become the "crush zone").
See the UseNet group sci.space.tech (which I suspect will be buzzing pretty heavily today...).
This'd yank it away from some Mac users- which would not be very popular.
If customers had to BUY a copy of IE (regardless of platform) well, that makes it easier for other browsers (like Netscape) to compete.
Competition exists to keep ANYBODY from becoming complacent. Given some of the stuff we've been seeing from Netscape nowadays (NS 6+ comes to mind) I think they could use some challenges.
Just because IE can be a pain in the butt to use doesn't mean it needs to be duct-taped to the Windoze OS.
When M$ first embarked on an effort to kill off Netscape, this marked a threat against all other desktoppable OSes (Dec Unix, SGI Irix, Solaris, Slolaris, AIX and even Linux and *BSD) since, if Netscape died off, it'd sound a death-knell for Unix systems.
I did not like that they wanted to cut out the "convenience" of OS choice...
On top of that, stories abound about how antique the Alpha's chip fab technology was.
So...
...Wanna bet that IBM doesn't mind making the chip? Especially if they're looking at cross-licensing some stuff?
(Heck, how many of IBM's own RISC patents are part of the Alpha anyway?)
C'mon, IBM's got some cool silicon of their own. I would not be surprised if IBM itself decides to start ANOTHER line of machines based on the Alpha (RS/7000 anybody?)...
Naw... It's more likely that IBM is having some fun and keeping the chip foundries cooking and just irritating Intel as much as they're annoying Sun...
Is this a no-downside scenario or what?
Hmmm...
I worked on some QNX boxes 6-7 years ago. They were quite secure- at least when it came to the licensing mechanism. It was way too paranoid.
It was always entertaining when you tried to do a make...
*SIGH*
Mind you, the QNX people are pretty aggressive w/r/t defending their product. It's just that, if there's a problem in the TCP/IP package, well, you had to KYBG until the patch arrived...
As soon as we have zero tolerance for speeding (considering that turnpike tickets are timestamped) the first politician who gets nailed will kill the process.
On another note, though, I worry that the speed control ("cruise control") will have an upper limit it can be set at. Heck, I'm surprised it hasn't already been tried...
On YET _another_ note, the latest cars which know the road they're on (thank you GPS) my eventually whine at you anytime you exceed the posted limit. If all cars were required to have this (and you spend more only for the display) I suspect that the ROM chips'd be the first to go...
I can just imagine... Mamas & Poppas (I think) doing "Slow Down, you move too fast..." (Hmmmm... a mainstream application for MP3s!)
And if you took much of the above seriously, you are in WAY worse shape than me.
But the plow comes first- so that we can put food into that can. It can be argued that food generation and distribution technology is up there with waste collection and relocation technology as the two infrastructures necessary to have a civilization.
We needed the plow in order to have farmering as a specialization; Without it, there can be NO specialization.
OK, so if we get decent nanotechnology it all changes, but that will force some kind of a phase change. If hate still exists by then, we're all toast...
OK, I admit to having been influenced by James Burke's "Connections"...
...has to be a cutting device that is at least 4000 years old.
It's called the "Plow".
I worked with SCADA systems where we had to mount the computer within a metal cabinet with a hermetically sealed door (which was bolted down in, IIRC, 4 places).
While these puppies can't be cheap, there must be a mass-market (or close to mass) considering that the cable companies and power companies need these.
And, hey, my experiences were 20 years ago.
These cabinets would've been big enough to handle PCs, BTW, though I'd worry about heat distribution (you're not gonna want to use a P-III, Athlon, Alpha or whatnot...).
Of course, you could go into business building these puppies in such a way that the CPU heat-sinks directly to the case...
I've seen his Heineken ads on TBS (TNT?) and thought they were a hoot.
:-) :-) :-)
I've also thought that a special film that ONLY consisted of his briefings to the various incarnations (is he a Time Lord or WHAT) of James Bond would be wonderful- especially for techies to watch. His dry delivery was too good for words.
I just hope that the other car wasn't driven by John Cleese, looking for a promotion
Hopefully Cleese will be able to carry the load in the future- but it can't help him that we've got such high expectations for subtle wit...
The old UNIVAC 1108 sold a *lot* of copies before UNIVAC's mgmt (Rand? Remington?) realized there actually was a demand for computers.
So, they rolled out the 1106 computer for less than the cost of the 1108 (the development costs for which had already been amortized) which only had a clock-card (and badges) different between the two machines (some time later the 1106's were their own machines, but the first cut was a downgraded 1108).
If you look at IBM's licensing issues for ADSM (on AIX/NT, maybe MVS) it seems that you can license it w/o paying for it- which is, in it's own way, true. If you've exceeded the nominal license, however, you may have problems getting serviced...
I don't think companies with their businesses dependant on these machines will be in a hurry to exceed their service contracts...
Ya gets what ya pays for- but you also pay for whatcha get...
I've heard that some folks w/i IBM didn't like the Domino Go webserver they were using, so they (sneakily?) replaced it w/ Apache. Executives noticed the improvements in performance and wanted to know how they got Domino Go to run so fast...
Beats me if it's true but it makes a cool story.
The key difference between IBM then and M$ now is that IBM put more effort into making things work.
With many of the shifts that have occurred, IBM's leadership has been humbled...
...which is why it's easier to deal with 'em nowadays. Just remember that IBM is opportunistic- but then, they had to learn how (something that AT&T always failed at when it came to computers) which is what competition is about.
There are some large jobs (like the merge phase of a sort) that MUST be performed as a single-thread operation.
Dealing with databases (and, especially, key/index management) that requires serious I/O bandwidth along with that single-thread performance.
Somehow I doubt that Linux will ever be a primary OS for an S/390 sysplex- but it could happen.
I'd figure that the VM version would be most likely (though VM tries to mimic bare metal anyway) but, AFAIK, there are folks inside IBM that want VM to evaporate (like it's gonna happen).
I could see Linux living within a VM allowing a system to handle MVS, VM/CMS and Unix applications all at the same time...
Of course, this kind of facility makes time-to-market for WebSphere App Server and brethren that much shorter...
I think you're forgetting the "glue logic" that keeps BeOS from being cleanly ported.
...which is one reason that Linux has taken longer to gain a foothold on Mac hardware (and the open-source mechanism allows distribution to other free OS's but BeOS finds it needs to do it in a "clean room" environment to retain their copyrights- rightly or wrongly).
When there are closed sections of the box, it's more difficult to take advantage of...
Seriously, consider that IBM's release of specs for PowerPC-based motherboards (which includes the artwork...) will make G4 technology (with documented glue logic) more available for Linux-o-philes. Heck, my main system at home is 4+ years old - it's an AMD 5x86-133; I haven't upgraded it since I didn't consider a Pentium as an upgrade path- I wanted an Alpha or a PowerPC (and I had expected cheap CHRP MBs to become available as "commodity parts").
Apple (apparently) did not want to allow for cloning since it'd reduce their H/W profit margins to (effectively) zero- which Steve Jobs wanted to retain. Against BeOS (much less Linux or FreeBSD) the MacOS would show it's senility on open hardware- so there needed to be a software margin too.
Now all I want is to get some PPC CHRP motherboards cheap...
-soup
The largest problem with what Mrs. Dole is asking for is the fact that she wants libraries to censor both children and adults.
...am I obsolete already?).
:-) some of my thoughts, of which (I am sure) many will disagree, and here is the key to civilization:
Agreed. *THIS* is a problem. Of course, Libraries are already segregated by age - at least in terms of what a person may borrow (I'm using the NY Public Library as a model here...
A library, however, is a public space. My main argument is that there is little/no reason for filtering AS LONG AS A BROWSER REALIZES THAT THIS IS BEING DONE IN A PUBLIC PLACE AND PRIVACY IS NOT POSSIBLE. If an activity belongs in a bedroom, well, don't view the streaming video in the library unless you don't mind having all of your neighbors watching over your shoulder. This is the core of my "position" (albeit non-missionary).
OK, so I'm a "compassionate" conservative. Folks who have raised children through to adulthood will tend in this direction- though is it mainly to protect one's own bloodline? BTSOOM! But I want my children to succeed...
A teen-age daughter wears out her father when she's dating since she always seems to pick a boyfriend 3 (or more) steps below her on the evolutionary ladder. Mothers constantly fret that they haven't set aside enough money to bail out their teen-age sons...
So, with that background provided, let's wade on in...
Values are important- but I don't want my children to automatically salute an authority figure and I'd like them to think for themselves. That doesn't stop me from wanting to implant certain (survival linked) prejudices:
Race is irrelevant. I someone else can put up with me, I can put up with them, regardless of race, color, creed, whatever. Discovering that one's spouse's ex-in-laws instilled a sense of racism in one's stepchildren is an appalling thing to experience.
Drugs (whose truth on the web?) - Hey, I was introduced to MJ in college 25+ years ago. It was interesting. Once. Maybe I'm wired funny but it wasn't all _that_ interesting. I guess I needed to get a life that I hated.
Sex can kill, these days. Granted, it can be argued that diseases won't jump between species (my daughter's boyfriends and her) but the reality is, for a father, far more frightening. Additionally, unless one's spouse is interested in knowing about differing positions there's not much point. Why bother? Porn isn't all that harmful except that it often gives the wrong message, like "When she says NO it really means YES"- and one doesn't want to hear about your daughter being date-raped by a guy who's viewed the same material YOU like.
Bombs can be considered evolution in action. It's also stupid. Knowledge is fine but it is illegal to act on it. A lot of things are that way. In all seriousness, sure, bomb-making information isn't all _that_ harmful since many of the idiots who'll act on it will blow themselves up- or get caught and then executed.
Violence is an ambiguous item. There are times where violence is called for- after all, War has existed (and been tolerated by God) because it performed a useful function (if you've looked at history, it has tended to take down corrupt leaderships). In this day of a more unified world we no longer have it as a useful check-and-balance. Likewise, on an individual basis, it could be argued that duelling should never have been outlawed (though it should be confined to principals and not use seconds). Duelling could function as another check-and-balance against corruption on an individual level and has the side effect of rendering politeness as an evolutionary advantage.
So, I've exposed (not XXX-posed
Tolerance is required. Approval is NOT required.
I tolerate people with other opinions and lifestyles; I am no more required to approve their lifestyles than they are of mine. Don't try too hard to sell me (which is an expression of intolerance) any more than I'll try to sell you.
No matter how much I'd like things to be different they won't be.
The bottom line? A library is a public place. There should be no privacy there. There should also be no censorship, either. There are many who would restrict our sources of information, but we must keep them open. Libraries tie us together as a civilization since they maintain the inventory of human knowledge- even if some of that knowledge is ugly.
Knowledge is power. Power provides freedom to choose.
Don't forget that politicians would love us all to be illiterate- then we could be more easily manipulated.
Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. Those who DO study history will be able to recognize that they are repeating it- even if they can't do anything about it.