Actually... The Top500 rankings system does establish some limits to prevent vendors from building, benchmarking, and publishing results on systems which are not available to customers. The restriction is that only 5% of a single vendor's total listed processing power can be at vendor owned facilities. See the Call for Participation.
We're not sure if BlueGene will be included on the list to be published this week, as it's an engineering system on IBM's manufacturing floor, and does not (yet) belong in a comparison of production systems. IBM needs 1,330 Terraflops of non-internal systems on the list to qualify BlueGene. The current list has ~400 TF worth of IBM systems, so BlueGene is unlikely to be on Tuesday's list unless the list maintainer decides to include it anyway.
What's certain is the the Earth Simulator will no longer be #1: NASA's SGI cluster was installed on site and in production even before being benchmarked, and the announced results of 42TF will push it down a notch just as easily as the "quietly submitted" results of 51.
IBM's system will certainly be high on the list when it enters, but subject to the list maintainer's discretion, they may have to wait until actually shipping it before they can have it included on the list. If they can manufacture, ship, and benchmark a 70TF system in the next 6 months, they likely will be #1 when the next list is published. Unless of course somebody buys an even larger Altix cluster or another vendor releases something competitive.
The restriction on submissions was designed for exactly this type of situation, and there's two parts to it:
What can be built in a lab is a function of money, and the larger vendors with other revenue streams can afford to build large systems for no purpose other than to post a benchmark - while smaller vendors can only afford to build what they can sell.
Posting more flops than anyone else is good work, but it really doesn't mean much to the HPC industry or user community until people can buy one, have it installed, and run their code on it.
One item often missed in discussions of Microsoft's software monopolies is that their dominance is furthered by the spread of illegal copies of Microsoft software. Each illegal copy of Office, Flight Simulator, and Windows is one less sale for a lower priced competitor.
This reduces the viability of competing with Microsoft, and serves Microsoft's own ends. Those who laugh at Microsoft's weak efforts to reduce piracy should note that Microsoft's dominance is partially founded on software piracy.
This is especially true of their dominance in operating systems - if I am willing to buy HalfLife and run it on a pirated copy of Windows, what motivation does Valve have to port it to my Linux and IRIX systems? Because HalfLife will not run on another system, five more users who are not members of the "WareZ group" are forced to purchase a copy of Windows.
Thus, software pirates do a disservice to all computer users.
That said, companies should seriously consider creating very low cost non-commercial home user licenses for their products. The simple fact is that the software industry virtually runs on Piracy. Pirated copies are the industry's most effective means of advertising, and this problem will not go away until companies address it themselves.
Simple facts: As an individual, I'm NOT going to blow $700 on a software package until I've used it extensively. As corporate software purchaser, I will NOT blow $100,000 on 200 licenses until I know that the software is worth that much to my company. These decisions cannot be made from marketing blurbs.
Given these circumstances, this round of siezures and arrest will only make a temporary dent in piracy. Sure, all the sites are shut down for now. But they'll be back in three months.
Two questions:
Wasn't the last major piracy bust done during Bush I?
Is this the Bush administration or the Gates administration? It's getting really hard to tell.
As Linux popularity and market share grows, the resistance to it, as embodied in this post, will also grow.
Currently, Linux intrudes on two major markets and communities - the commercial UNIX world, and the NT world. As advancements in GUI environments and basic usability come along, Linux will also begin to intrude on Windows desktop OS's. It'll probably also move in on the embedded market, but I'll ignore that for now, because, like DBA's and web surfers, embedded OS users usually don't care about the OS as long as it does the job.
Anti-Linux zealotry isn't likely to come from commercial UNIX users. While Linux may represent a threat to traditional UNIX vendors which are slow to adopt Linux as a core OS technology (SUN), it is an opportunity for others (SGI, IBM). More importantly, at the individual level the overlap between Linux and UNIX users is large. To anyone familiar with multiple commercial UNIX distributions, the similarities of UNIX and Linux are greater than the differences. Current UNIX users adapt easily to Linux, and consequently do not view Linux as a threat.
Windows users, on the other hand, have more adapting to do - new applications and interfaces spawn resistance even within the Windows world. "Windows Professionals" - NT administrators and other IT staff - have even more to learn before adapting to Linux, as the adminstrative tools are completely different and are based on concepts completely foreign to them. Consequently, Linux represents a basic threat to them. If Linux is deployed where they work, they will have to adapt or become useless.
An important factor to consider is one of the great things Linux (and UNIX) has going for it - reduced administrative cost. With UNIX and Linux, fewer people are required to run more systems. This is especially true when the people doing it have a higher skill level. With Windows, a certain number or people are required to perform a given number of tasks on a given number of systems. With Linux and UNIX, the number of people required to do the same thing is inversely proportional to skill of the people doing it, up to the point at which the number of people remains constant for any number of systems.
If *nix usage and marketshare continues to grow, this means that the IT workforce will shrink as productivity increases. A smaller number of people with greater skill will be accomplishing what the current workforce is doing. Because the current UNIX worker base will most easily adapt to the transition, this meanss that they can look forward to continues employment in even higher paying jobs. Meanwhile, the current "Windows Professionals" will be stuck working in a field with shrinking job counts and a lower barrier to entry, with correspondingly lower wages.
So think about the *real* implications of this article, and other like it, to a Windows Admin. "Distant Thunder" doesn't even cover it - more like the corporate bean counter grinding the company axe in the cubicle next door.
The resistance to Linux will grow as Linux's threat becomes more apparent and tangible. As Linux's market share increase, and Windows' shrinks, the number of Anti-Linux and Pro-MS zealots will increase in number, but and become much more vocal. Posts like this will become more common and more virulent. It was like this when the Amiga faded - Amiga zealots become louder and more fanatical as they became increasingly desperate.
Get used to it. It's the price of victory, but it won't last forever.
As a self proclaimed authority on That, I must say: That is true.
As for the cops, I'd say more like 10%. A small minority, with a slightly larger minority in the know.
Re: crypto protected by second amendment?
on
New Cyberlaws
·
· Score: 1
So, back from the top on every current topic but this one (unless I manage to sqeeze in another grass link.
Whilst indirectly blathering about the iminent threat to liberty imposed by second amendment infringements thrust upon us with the unwitting support of the lemming proletariat in the delirious aftermath of two assholes with guns in a high school giving The Man exactly what he needs to stop using KY when raping america,
I came across the idea of using the second amendment to protect rights related to cryptography. After a little thought and a few pints of the one true beer, I realise that it would be completely useless for the primary crypto issue we deal with these days: export control. Since the export of weapons is necessarily and legitimately controlled, and the arguement rests on the current interpretations upholding ITAR, it's self defeating, so America will never be as cool as Canada.
However, when the government begins to crack down on encryption domestically, the interpretation of crypto as a munition vaguely hints that encryption may be subject to second amendment protections. We have a right to bear arms (have access to weapons) for individual and national defence in the event of invasion (framer's intent). Cryptography can be used for those purposes, and it's _obviously_ a munition, right?
It would be sickeningly funny to see government idiocy used in the defense of the right to free speech and privacy.
Of course, to return to my blathering, the second amendment is only given lip service these days. And now that we can't have anything more potent than a single shot hunting rifle or handgun with 20 safety dongles on it (a consipracy by the christian right - finally putting Darwin to rest!), we don't have any way to defend our liberty, so the DC Fools are free to deny any right they please.
Interesting... When typing in an IE 4 text window, my instinctive pressing of ESC caused everything I wrote to be erased. Yet another mickeysoft attempt to screw unix users? Ah, well, at least someone is screwing me:^)
Absolutely. Open source will continue with or without Red Hat. As long as we have freedom of speech, we'll have open source. I personally think that Red Hat will do reasonably well. The primary factor behind the success or failure of a tech product is not it's underpinning, but a basic level of ability to meet consumer demands combined with savvy marketing. Open source naturally evolves to meet it's users needs. Both growing commercial involvement and increasing grass roots efforts are accelerating this evolution. (sorry, couldn't resist the grass link!)
Red Hat has shown they they are quite skilled at marketing - having (for better or worse) appropriated the largest portion of the media's attention to the open source movement. I'm fairly confident that they'll be a player for many years. Thankfully, the nature of their product insures that they are not the only open source entry into the market - even if they are the largest. As long as Red Hat manages to control costs and continues to get advertising and media coverage, they'll pull a profit - how big is the interesting question. I don't think it'll be huge, but it'll be there.
The greatest thing about open source is that you can't kill it. No matter how hard it's detractors try, it won't go away. It's the achilles heel for Mr. Bill - a competitor that can win, but can not lose. No matter what investors think, it'll be hard to beat Red Hat, and impossible to beat open source itself.
The drug law article puts me be a small but not insignificant step closer to agreeing with you. Unfortunately, the Government has sensed this and has managed to erode our second amendment rights with our consent. It's an AB-BA locking order. The fundamental right is that of free speech. Second to that is the right to defend it. To deny the right to free speech, the means of defending it must be taken first.
Hmm... I wonder if anyone has ever tried defending encryption using the second amendment?:^)
The trademark law worries me as well. The Internic already made some effort to manage this. Changes in top level domain management may require that this (very reasonable) policy become law. Nonetheless, it's a fine line to draw. What I wonder is why congress doesn't attempt to allow existing tradmark law sort it out. At present, there's no infringement to use "Pepso" as a brand, or to make a statement about Pepsi, the product. For the most part, the existing trademark laws are reasonable, and these laws should transfer easily to domain names.
What both of these articles demonstrates is the profound cluelessness of our lawmakers. They continue to define it as a new media not suceptible to current policies. The technology is new, but there is nothing new about either free speech or trademarks. Basically, I think it comes down to the fact that Congress wants to look like they are doing something relevent to current events and culture. They simply fail to understand their actions, and do not consider that they may do more harm than good.
To get back to the first point - rights are first denied blindly by fools. Later they are denied delibrately by the opportunists who replaced the fools.
Any links to the proposed legislation for review? How about some links to good ways to fight it?
Perhaps he intended the Randian definition of a Communist: Both taking and giving according to desires proclaimed as "needed for the common good". An accurate description of some scientists, who do not recognize the need for justifying the benefit of their research to garner high levels of public funding, and disdain private research because the source of the funding benefits.
Of course, ScienceMag is run by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It's a non-profit group. What annoys me is that you have to join the AAAS and subscribe to the dead tree edition - which means both killing trees and supporting their lobbying efforts, some of which I object to.
There's nothing wrong with paying money for a service (most of us would starve otherwise), but the reality is worse than the original poster felt. You have to hand over your ideology to gain access to the information - which defeats the purpose of getting information in the first place.
There's definately a move to put more diverse products into the market at SGI. And they've put good stuff out the door, but haven't been able to sell it in the volume necessary to pull a decent margin.
So how about 10) A bunch of people who played marketing experts on an Indy Cam find themselves unemployed on Tuesday and end up at Microsoft. A few years later, Linus achieves global domination. Even better, the engineers bought off by NetApp are revealed to have been working for satanic.org, a super-secret operations group of the ILUG. Netapp falls to (Linux MIPS based) Cobalt, and the penguin government purchases large numbers of big Onyx3's to model plans for paving Canada in realtime 3D. Said marketing experts are branded with a g and are exiled to Seattle without umbrellas.
Don't forget Samba, too. SGI has been dipping it's toes in open software for more than a year now - not including the times open software has been incorporated into IRIX in the past (ie tcsh and top). Learning open software development practices has been an ongoing process at SGI - IRIX 6.5's maintenance process has a remarkable resemblance to those of several open source projects. They're also doing quite a bit to establish SGI as a valued member of the community by making contributions to the open source base. SGI is one of the few vendors who have realized that open source projects are community efforts and success depends on having the recognition and support of the existing community.
Note that effort to have Linux running well on the visual workstations have been redoubled, it looks like Fahrenheit was canned, and the new Intel based low-end server is being pushed with more emphasis on Linux than on NT. Maybe a unix vendor found it hard to work with folks from Seattle. What a shocker!
Unlike the other major vendors that are hopping onto the open source train, SGI still has some remainder of the freewheeling, motivated by coolness factor and pride in achievement (that has to be flagrantly displayed) corporate culture that made them a leader in the first half of the decade. The same motivations that drive open source. The 'g' stands for geeks, maybe?
Another interesting thought is that while IRIX is certainly one of the most advanced OS's around, the only reason it exists is that SGI wants to sell hardware, but needs to have an OS that will actually take advantage of it. All that really takes is being able to contribute a few key pieces. They are bound to IRIX until another OS has it's capabilities but don't feel like waiting for a potential option to catch up - especially when they might make money supporting it now.
Slashdot Mirror
A 64 bit time_t. Your IRIX systems will keep chugging.
Actually... The Top500 rankings system does establish some limits to prevent vendors from building, benchmarking, and publishing results on systems which are not available to customers. The restriction is that only 5% of a single vendor's total listed processing power can be at vendor owned facilities. See the Call for Participation.
We're not sure if BlueGene will be included on the list to be published this week, as it's an engineering system on IBM's manufacturing floor, and does not (yet) belong in a comparison of production systems. IBM needs 1,330 Terraflops of non-internal systems on the list to qualify BlueGene. The current list has ~400 TF worth of IBM systems, so BlueGene is unlikely to be on Tuesday's list unless the list maintainer decides to include it anyway.
What's certain is the the Earth Simulator will no longer be #1: NASA's SGI cluster was installed on site and in production even before being benchmarked, and the announced results of 42TF will push it down a notch just as easily as the "quietly submitted" results of 51.
IBM's system will certainly be high on the list when it enters, but subject to the list maintainer's discretion, they may have to wait until actually shipping it before they can have it included on the list. If they can manufacture, ship, and benchmark a 70TF system in the next 6 months, they likely will be #1 when the next list is published. Unless of course somebody buys an even larger Altix cluster or another vendor releases something competitive.
The restriction on submissions was designed for exactly this type of situation, and there's two parts to it:
What can be built in a lab is a function of money, and the larger vendors with other revenue streams can afford to build large systems for no purpose other than to post a benchmark - while smaller vendors can only afford to build what they can sell.
Posting more flops than anyone else is good work, but it really doesn't mean much to the HPC industry or user community until people can buy one, have it installed, and run their code on it.
One item often missed in discussions of Microsoft's software monopolies is that their dominance is furthered by the spread of illegal copies of Microsoft software. Each illegal copy of Office, Flight Simulator, and Windows is one less sale for a lower priced competitor.
This reduces the viability of competing with Microsoft, and serves Microsoft's own ends. Those who laugh at Microsoft's weak efforts to reduce piracy should note that Microsoft's dominance is partially founded on software piracy.
This is especially true of their dominance in operating systems - if I am willing to buy HalfLife and run it on a pirated copy of Windows, what motivation does Valve have to port it to my Linux and IRIX systems? Because HalfLife will not run on another system, five more users who are not members of the "WareZ group" are forced to purchase a copy of Windows.
Thus, software pirates do a disservice to all computer users.
That said, companies should seriously consider creating very low cost non-commercial home user licenses for their products. The simple fact is that the software industry virtually runs on Piracy. Pirated copies are the industry's most effective means of advertising, and this problem will not go away until companies address it themselves.
Simple facts: As an individual, I'm NOT going to blow $700 on a software package until I've used it extensively. As corporate software purchaser, I will NOT blow $100,000 on 200 licenses until I know that the software is worth that much to my company. These decisions cannot be made from marketing blurbs.
Given these circumstances, this round of siezures and arrest will only make a temporary dent in piracy. Sure, all the sites are shut down for now. But they'll be back in three months.
Two questions:
Wasn't the last major piracy bust done during Bush I?
Is this the Bush administration or the Gates administration? It's getting really hard to tell.
As Linux popularity and market share grows, the resistance to it, as embodied in this post, will also grow.
Currently, Linux intrudes on two major markets and communities - the commercial UNIX world, and the NT world. As advancements in GUI environments and basic usability come along, Linux will also begin to intrude on Windows desktop OS's. It'll probably also move in on the embedded market, but I'll ignore that for now, because, like DBA's and web surfers, embedded OS users usually don't care about the OS as long as it does the job.
Anti-Linux zealotry isn't likely to come from commercial UNIX users. While Linux may represent a threat to traditional UNIX vendors which are slow to adopt Linux as a core OS technology (SUN), it is an opportunity for others (SGI, IBM). More importantly, at the individual level the overlap between Linux and UNIX users is large. To anyone familiar with multiple commercial UNIX distributions, the similarities of UNIX and Linux are greater than the differences. Current UNIX users adapt easily to Linux, and consequently do not view Linux as a threat.
Windows users, on the other hand, have more adapting to do - new applications and interfaces spawn resistance even within the Windows world. "Windows Professionals" - NT administrators and other IT staff - have even more to learn before adapting to Linux, as the adminstrative tools are completely different and are based on concepts completely foreign to them. Consequently, Linux represents a basic threat to them. If Linux is deployed where they work, they will have to adapt or become useless.
An important factor to consider is one of the great things Linux (and UNIX) has going for it - reduced administrative cost. With UNIX and Linux, fewer people are required to run more systems. This is especially true when the people doing it have a higher skill level. With Windows, a certain number or people are required to perform a given number of tasks on a given number of systems. With Linux and UNIX, the number of people required to do the same thing is inversely proportional to skill of the people doing it, up to the point at which the number of people remains constant for any number of systems.
If *nix usage and marketshare continues to grow, this means that the IT workforce will shrink as productivity increases. A smaller number of people with greater skill will be accomplishing what the current workforce is doing. Because the current UNIX worker base will most easily adapt to the transition, this meanss that they can look forward to continues employment in even higher paying jobs. Meanwhile, the current "Windows Professionals" will be stuck working in a field with shrinking job counts and a lower barrier to entry, with correspondingly lower wages.
So think about the *real* implications of this article, and other like it, to a Windows Admin. "Distant Thunder" doesn't even cover it - more like the corporate bean counter grinding the company axe in the cubicle next door.
The resistance to Linux will grow as Linux's threat becomes more apparent and tangible. As Linux's market share increase, and Windows' shrinks, the number of Anti-Linux and Pro-MS zealots will increase in number, but and become much more vocal. Posts like this will become more common and more virulent. It was like this when the Amiga faded - Amiga zealots become louder and more fanatical as they became increasingly desperate.
Get used to it. It's the price of victory, but it won't last forever.
As a self proclaimed authority on That, I must say: That is true.
As for the cops, I'd say more like 10%. A small minority, with a slightly larger minority in the know.
So, back from the top on every current topic but this one (unless I manage to sqeeze in another grass link.
:^)
Whilst indirectly blathering about the iminent threat to liberty imposed by second amendment infringements thrust upon us with the unwitting support of the lemming proletariat in the delirious aftermath of two assholes with guns in a high school giving The Man exactly what he needs to stop using KY when raping america,
I came across the idea of using the second amendment to protect rights related to cryptography. After a little thought and a few pints of the one true beer, I realise that it would be completely useless for the primary crypto issue we deal with these days: export control. Since the export of weapons is necessarily and legitimately controlled, and the arguement rests on the current interpretations upholding ITAR, it's self defeating, so America will never be as cool as Canada.
However, when the government begins to crack down on encryption domestically, the interpretation of crypto as a munition vaguely hints that encryption may be subject to second amendment protections. We have a right to bear arms (have access to weapons) for individual and national defence in the event of invasion (framer's intent). Cryptography can be used for those purposes, and it's _obviously_ a munition, right?
It would be sickeningly funny to see government idiocy used in the defense of the right to free speech and privacy.
Of course, to return to my blathering, the second amendment is only given lip service these days. And now that we can't have anything more potent than a single shot hunting rifle or handgun with 20 safety dongles on it (a consipracy by the christian right - finally putting Darwin to rest!), we don't have any way to defend our liberty, so the DC Fools are free to deny any right they please.
Interesting... When typing in an IE 4 text window, my instinctive pressing of ESC caused everything I wrote to be erased. Yet another mickeysoft attempt to screw unix users? Ah, well, at least someone is screwing me
Absolutely. Open source will continue with or without Red Hat. As long as we have freedom of speech, we'll have open source.
I personally think that Red Hat will do reasonably well. The primary factor behind the success or failure of a tech product is not it's underpinning, but a basic level of ability to meet consumer demands combined with savvy marketing.
Open source naturally evolves to meet it's users needs. Both growing commercial involvement and increasing grass roots efforts are accelerating this evolution.
(sorry, couldn't resist the grass link!)
Red Hat has shown they they are quite skilled at marketing - having (for better or worse) appropriated the largest portion of the media's attention to the open source movement. I'm fairly confident that they'll be a player for many years. Thankfully, the nature of their product insures that they are not the only open source entry into the market - even if they are the largest.
As long as Red Hat manages to control costs and continues to get advertising and media coverage, they'll pull a profit - how big is the interesting question. I don't think it'll be huge, but it'll be there.
The greatest thing about open source is that you can't kill it. No matter how hard it's detractors try, it won't go away. It's the achilles heel for Mr. Bill - a competitor that can win, but can not lose. No matter what investors think, it'll be hard to beat Red Hat, and impossible to beat open source itself.
The drug law article puts me be a small but not insignificant step closer to agreeing with you. Unfortunately, the Government has sensed this and has managed to erode our second amendment rights with our consent.
:^)
It's an AB-BA locking order. The fundamental right is that of free speech. Second to that is the right to defend it. To deny the right to free speech, the means of defending it must be taken first.
Hmm... I wonder if anyone has ever tried defending encryption using the second amendment?
The trademark law worries me as well. The Internic already made some effort to manage this. Changes in top level domain management may require that this (very reasonable) policy become law.
Nonetheless, it's a fine line to draw. What I wonder is why congress doesn't attempt to allow existing tradmark law sort it out. At present, there's no infringement to use "Pepso" as a brand, or to make a statement about Pepsi, the product. For the most part, the existing trademark laws are reasonable, and these laws should transfer easily to domain names.
What both of these articles demonstrates is the profound cluelessness of our lawmakers. They continue to define it as a new media not suceptible to current policies. The technology is new, but there is nothing new about either free speech or trademarks.
Basically, I think it comes down to the fact that Congress wants to look like they are doing something relevent to current events and culture. They simply fail to understand their actions, and do not consider that they may do more harm than good.
To get back to the first point - rights are first denied blindly by fools. Later they are denied delibrately by the opportunists who replaced the fools.
Any links to the proposed legislation for review? How about some links to good ways to fight it?
Perhaps he intended the Randian definition of a Communist: Both taking and giving according to desires proclaimed as "needed for the common good". An accurate description of some scientists, who do not recognize the need for justifying the benefit of their research to garner high levels of public funding, and disdain private research because the source of the funding benefits.
Of course, ScienceMag is run by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It's a non-profit group.
What annoys me is that you have to join the AAAS and subscribe to the dead tree edition - which means both killing trees and supporting their lobbying efforts, some of which I object to.
There's nothing wrong with paying money for a service (most of us would starve otherwise), but the reality is worse than the original poster felt. You have to hand over your ideology to gain access to the information - which defeats the purpose of getting information in the first place.
Is this /.? Or bad-attitude?
There's definately a move to put more diverse products into the market at SGI. And they've put good stuff out the door, but haven't been able to sell it in the volume necessary to pull a decent margin.
So how about 10) A bunch of people who played marketing experts on an Indy Cam find themselves unemployed on Tuesday and end up at Microsoft. A few years later, Linus achieves global domination. Even better, the engineers bought off by NetApp are revealed to have been working for satanic.org, a super-secret operations group of the ILUG. Netapp falls to (Linux MIPS based) Cobalt, and the penguin government purchases large numbers of big Onyx3's to model plans for paving Canada in realtime 3D. Said marketing experts are branded with a g and are exiled to Seattle without umbrellas.
Now is that b-a or g-a?
Don't forget Samba, too.
SGI has been dipping it's toes in open software for more than a year now - not including the times open software has been incorporated into IRIX in the past (ie tcsh and top). Learning open software development practices has been an ongoing process at SGI - IRIX 6.5's maintenance process has a remarkable resemblance to those of several open source projects. They're also doing quite a bit to establish SGI as a valued member of the community by making contributions to the open source base. SGI is one of the few vendors who have realized that open source projects are community efforts and success depends on having the recognition and support of the existing community.
Note that effort to have Linux running well on the visual workstations have been redoubled, it looks like Fahrenheit was canned, and the new
Intel based low-end server is being pushed with more emphasis on Linux than on NT. Maybe a unix vendor found it hard to work with folks from Seattle. What a shocker!
Unlike the other major vendors that are hopping onto the open source train, SGI still has some remainder of the freewheeling, motivated by coolness factor and pride in achievement (that has to be flagrantly displayed) corporate culture that made them a leader in the first half of the decade. The same motivations that drive open source. The 'g' stands for geeks, maybe?
Another interesting thought is that while IRIX is certainly one of the most advanced OS's around, the only reason it exists is that SGI wants to sell hardware, but needs to have an OS that will actually take advantage of it. All that really takes is being able to contribute a few key pieces. They are bound to IRIX until another OS has it's capabilities but don't feel like waiting for a potential option to catch up - especially when they might make money supporting it now.