* Solaris 9 Operating System (SPARC Platform Edition)
* Solaris 9 Operating System (x86 Platform Edition)
* Solaris 8 Operating System (SPARC Platform Edition)
* Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 2.1"
The way I see it, they are investing in things that are useful to them whether gnu/linux takes off or not....
I agree they are certainly hedging their bets. Since Linux has been a significant threat to traditional UNIX, Sun knows they have to play along with Linux to stay competitive. Meanwhile, they are agressively marketing Solaris, while reselling Linux on some of their hardware.
I think that Sun has been going through the traditional psychological stages regarding Linux: denial, anger, fear, etc. finally leading to acceptance. However, given that they have started selling a sizable line of Opteron servers, I think they are getting much more comfortable with the idea of selling Linux on Sun-branded hardware, because they can still sell support contracts for them. They are no longer the 100% binary compatible and API compatible product line like they used to be, but the market is forcing them out of it.
This is no longer true. Sun is having their x86 machines certified for Windows.
They may be certified for Windows, but I don't think Sun will actually sell you Windows. They use words like "customer provided" regarding running Windows on their x86 hardware.
just about every action they have taken recently has been intended to destroy my ability to use gnu/linux, my operating system of choice.
Like creating their JDS and releasing it first for Linux and selling Opteron-based servers certified for Linux and adding more Linux compatibility to Solaris and contributing to GNOME and OpenOffice.org?
Sun hates Microsoft just like everyone else. Their deals with Microsoft are very likely just to keep their lawyers happy (e.g., patent licensing). In fact, Sun remains the only large computer company that has no OEM relationship with Microsoft at all, which works very much to their advantage in being able to market Linux.
I doubt Sun hates Linux, but it is clear why they would dislike Red Hat. Red Hat is a true competitor against Solaris and Sun's own Linux distributions. Sun would play along with Red Hat as a reseller only as long as it takes to replace any Red Hat-branded software with Sun-branded software.
I still don't understand why the common culture at Slashdot is to bash Sun at all costs, even if it requires misinformation to do so. It's almost as bad as some of the rants for and against Microsoft, HP, Intel, etc. (not IBM, of course, because IBM paints penguins on sidewalks--that makes them all nice sugar and spice).
Today's level 7 would only qualify as a level 5 in two years.
The solution: model years. Cars, mobile homes, and, now, PCs. Model years just might be the right thing for a maturing industry, as it helps remind people how old their PC is. For example, my computer is a 1997 model (geez, that's almost eight years old). For many people, having a car from 1997 is just fine. Other people need to feel modern and trade in every two years. The same market forces will apply to computers just like every other industry. And, just like the auto industry, the computer industry will always be in business, just not growing exponentially like they were several years ago.
They are issuing liscences, its not like they need anything speciale, windows like, to do that...
Where I used to live, it appeared the state DMV replaced their green-screen mainframe terminals with PCs running Windows 98 (complete with cheapo Lexmark inkjet printers, too), which, in turn, were running a terminal program to...the mainframe.
I really think the whole project was just some pork to make people look busy.
A large software project (say, Windows) is vastly more complex than any other sort of engineering project (say, a bridge).
I used to think this was true, but the truth is that bridges are darn complicated when you look at the engineering details. Also, the traditional consensus is that building a bridge requires a lot of people (less detail per person), but many people still think a team of six people can write the world in software with no up-front design. Up to now, it is mostly a case that the world is in a collective denial about just how expensive good software would be. A new suspension bridge can be hundreds of millions of dollars requiring bond referendums, but the next software project gets pocket change and six months.
Are you sure? Look at the list of regulations that computer hardware must meet (FCC regulations, etc.), then look at what's available on store shelves. The main difference is that any person with a compiler can make software, but it requires the capital investment of a manufacturing plant to make hardware. To this end, I think software, even Microsoft, is largely still a hobbyist industry. It certainly feels like it.
Seriously, can't the tech industry rise above this Enron-ish nonsense?
I thought the tech industry was the least ethical of them all. EULAs, marketing and selling bad software to people who don't need it, the "consulting" con game, posting unreal job requirements and expecting to provide no training, hijacking industry standards to promote market share, etc. A lot of these problems have come and gone in other industries, but IT is going strong.
A thought just occurred to me: why do corporations take ownership of employee's copyrights instead of taking limited exclusive license? It's the employees doing the creating. Why not make Disney pay employees and former employees for continuations of exclusive license, until the copyright formally expires?
Regardless, copyright terms are getting too long. The great masters of 20th century classical music, for example, would gain much greater appreciation if their sheet music were affordable and not artificially jacked up in price by someone who really has no claim to the work.
One of my physics teachers said Indigo was put into the spectrum for the sole purpose of allowing ROYGBIV (easy to pronounce), instead of ROYGBV (hard to pronounce).
What are the odds that the PS3 will have 512 MB of ram? 384?
It seems consoles lag consumer PCs in RAM, so I wouldn't be suprised at all to see 256MB in the PS3. For example, the PS2 has 32MB when PCs had 64 to 128MB, and I'm pretty sure the PS1 fell into the same ratio (a few MB RAM in the PS1?). Since modern PCs tend to have 256MB to 512MB or more, 256MB would probably sound about right at the time the PS3 is released. The next race won't be to put Linux on the PS3, but Windows! (I know the ISA will be a hurdle in this)
I wonder what medicine and aviation would be like if their devices were allowed to be built like Diebold builds their machines. Lives on the line vs. the life of our democracy on the line...I don't see that great a distinction.
It depends on how bad their previous UNIX system was. Any operating system can be neglected into oblivion. Also, if they got all new hardware to run Windows 2000, when the old hardware might have been ten-year-old 50MHz SMP boxes, then upgrade would be the right term. It's unfortunate that they didn't decide to upgrade to faster UNIX boxes, but that's politics for you.
I was planning to vote for Kerry or Alfred E Neuman (whats the difference?).
If you pay close attention, you will see that GWB is actually Alfred E. Neuman in disguise. I would post a conspiracy theory about the current administration being totally the product of a Mad Magazine satire, but I fear the odds of being right are too great to bear.
Just look at Solaris 10 (a big upgrade from Solaris 8 and 9) and the coming Niagara systems (32-way on a single chip and system board--thousands of threads and terabytes of RAM in a rack). Also, the SunOS kernel is nothing to laugh at. Java will always be debated, but it is fundamentally useful.
I've always had the impression that Sun does make mistakes, but they can stomach the lessons from them. For example, I'd hope that the limited market for MAJC (a dual core CPU) has at least given them a running start for UltraSPARC IV and Niagara. Some people say that IBM beat Sun to dual core with POWER, but Sun did have one--just not UltraSPARC.
The problem with the auto industry in the 1970s and 1980s is that they just produced utter stinking crap. I wonder if auto engineers from that period could have engineered their way out of an open box, looking at the terrible emissions controls (god-awful cobwebs of vacuum hoses and unreliable EGR values and carburetors from hell among other things) and the poor performance and economy of their cars. They put 90HP four-cylinder engines into 4000lb. SUVs back then...that's how terrible they were.
Really, the only thing I worry about regarding Sun is that no one is willing to pay top dollar for a battle-tank-like workstation (SPARCstations, early Ultras), so Sun has inevitably gone to less expensive cases that aren't built from riveted heavy gauge steel. Otherwise, their hardware is generally very good and Solaris is quite good, and ever year they do make real progress. I'm already debating if I want Solaris 10 at home.
1) No traffic to/from work. 2) Higher pay. 3) Quiet workplace. 4) Running errands without taking time off.
Quite a while back, one of my favorite summer jobs was third shift doing odd jobs at a factory. Idle assembly lines at night can be a little spooky, but it was generally a lot of fun to walk around during breaks. The only hard part was getting used to sleeping during the daytime.
If there is a shortage of nursing staff the solution should be to raise the incentive to be a nurse. That incentive is pay and benefits.
Er, that's exactly what's happening. Some hospitals will pay for your nursing degree, if you work for them after graduation. Also, nurses generally are paid more than other health care positions like paramedics and lab techs.
IMHO, one of the biggest problems with the employment arrangement is that workers only get to negotiate their wage once....
I agree. One thing that happened at my wife's workplace (healthcare-related) is that the market for wages is increasing faster than people's annual cost-of-living raises. This means new hires are sometimes paid more than people who have worked there for years. It's completely backwards.
The original poster's word choice was poor, and it caused the predictable stream of responses.
What should have been said is that one watt of energy input can transfer four watts of heat from one place to another. This is what heat pumps, refrigerators, and air conditioners do. With eletric resistance heat, all you can do is move that one watt of energy into the room as a direct conversion of electric energy into heat energy.
There is a reason poorer people have electric resistence heat and everyone else on the planet has heat pumps or gas/oil furnaces. Anyone who can get past the initial purchase price and see the future savings will pass up electric heat like passing up an obviously drugged-out hitchhiker with a mysterious duffle bag at 3am on a rural highway.
Of course, electric heat is okay for very short-term use to take the chill out of a bathroom, for example, but it doesn't belong anywhere else.
Bush can screw the enviroment, tax people into the ground, reinstate the draft, declare war on canada and mexico and still have the christian right's vote.
One thing that is disturbing about the proposed Marriage Amendment, for example, is that Bush, by supporting it, shows how little he understands the foundations for freedom in the USA. Any amendments designed to side-step the First Amendment are just wrong by any measure, regardless of how popular the amendment would or would not be. The amendment system is for adding new legal rights not for taking them away, and it is saddening that so many elected officials seem to not understand this.
Slashdot Mirror
And notice it's only "desktop" there is no "Java Server".
Sun Java Enterprise System
From their datasheet:
"Operating Systems and Platforms
* Solaris 9 Operating System (SPARC Platform Edition)
* Solaris 9 Operating System (x86 Platform Edition)
* Solaris 8 Operating System (SPARC Platform Edition)
* Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 2.1"
The way I see it, they are investing in things that are useful to them whether gnu/linux takes off or not....
I agree they are certainly hedging their bets. Since Linux has been a significant threat to traditional UNIX, Sun knows they have to play along with Linux to stay competitive. Meanwhile, they are agressively marketing Solaris, while reselling Linux on some of their hardware.
I think that Sun has been going through the traditional psychological stages regarding Linux: denial, anger, fear, etc. finally leading to acceptance. However, given that they have started selling a sizable line of Opteron servers, I think they are getting much more comfortable with the idea of selling Linux on Sun-branded hardware, because they can still sell support contracts for them. They are no longer the 100% binary compatible and API compatible product line like they used to be, but the market is forcing them out of it.
This is no longer true. Sun is having their x86 machines certified for Windows.
They may be certified for Windows, but I don't think Sun will actually sell you Windows. They use words like "customer provided" regarding running Windows on their x86 hardware.
just about every action they have taken recently has been intended to destroy my ability to use gnu/linux, my operating system of choice.
Like creating their JDS and releasing it first for Linux and selling Opteron-based servers certified for Linux and adding more Linux compatibility to Solaris and contributing to GNOME and OpenOffice.org?
Sun hates Microsoft just like everyone else. Their deals with Microsoft are very likely just to keep their lawyers happy (e.g., patent licensing). In fact, Sun remains the only large computer company that has no OEM relationship with Microsoft at all, which works very much to their advantage in being able to market Linux.
I doubt Sun hates Linux, but it is clear why they would dislike Red Hat. Red Hat is a true competitor against Solaris and Sun's own Linux distributions. Sun would play along with Red Hat as a reseller only as long as it takes to replace any Red Hat-branded software with Sun-branded software.
I still don't understand why the common culture at Slashdot is to bash Sun at all costs, even if it requires misinformation to do so. It's almost as bad as some of the rants for and against Microsoft, HP, Intel, etc. (not IBM, of course, because IBM paints penguins on sidewalks--that makes them all nice sugar and spice).
Today's level 7 would only qualify as a level 5 in two years.
The solution: model years. Cars, mobile homes, and, now, PCs. Model years just might be the right thing for a maturing industry, as it helps remind people how old their PC is. For example, my computer is a 1997 model (geez, that's almost eight years old). For many people, having a car from 1997 is just fine. Other people need to feel modern and trade in every two years. The same market forces will apply to computers just like every other industry. And, just like the auto industry, the computer industry will always be in business, just not growing exponentially like they were several years ago.
Since when has anyone at a DMV cared about looking busy?
Not DMV employees but contractors, the masters of looking busy.
They are issuing liscences, its not like they need anything speciale, windows like, to do that...
Where I used to live, it appeared the state DMV replaced their green-screen mainframe terminals with PCs running Windows 98 (complete with cheapo Lexmark inkjet printers, too), which, in turn, were running a terminal program to...the mainframe.
I really think the whole project was just some pork to make people look busy.
A large software project (say, Windows) is vastly more complex than any other sort of engineering project (say, a bridge).
I used to think this was true, but the truth is that bridges are darn complicated when you look at the engineering details. Also, the traditional consensus is that building a bridge requires a lot of people (less detail per person), but many people still think a team of six people can write the world in software with no up-front design. Up to now, it is mostly a case that the world is in a collective denial about just how expensive good software would be. A new suspension bridge can be hundreds of millions of dollars requiring bond referendums, but the next software project gets pocket change and six months.
...the net effect would be to slow things down.
Are you sure? Look at the list of regulations that computer hardware must meet (FCC regulations, etc.), then look at what's available on store shelves. The main difference is that any person with a compiler can make software, but it requires the capital investment of a manufacturing plant to make hardware. To this end, I think software, even Microsoft, is largely still a hobbyist industry. It certainly feels like it.
Seriously, can't the tech industry rise above this Enron-ish nonsense?
I thought the tech industry was the least ethical of them all. EULAs, marketing and selling bad software to people who don't need it, the "consulting" con game, posting unreal job requirements and expecting to provide no training, hijacking industry standards to promote market share, etc. A lot of these problems have come and gone in other industries, but IT is going strong.
A thought just occurred to me: why do corporations take ownership of employee's copyrights instead of taking limited exclusive license? It's the employees doing the creating. Why not make Disney pay employees and former employees for continuations of exclusive license, until the copyright formally expires?
Regardless, copyright terms are getting too long. The great masters of 20th century classical music, for example, would gain much greater appreciation if their sheet music were affordable and not artificially jacked up in price by someone who really has no claim to the work.
Hee-haw!
ROYGBIV - Somewhere between green and indigo.
One of my physics teachers said Indigo was put into the spectrum for the sole purpose of allowing ROYGBIV (easy to pronounce), instead of ROYGBV (hard to pronounce).
I love driller!
What are the odds that the PS3 will have 512 MB of ram? 384?
It seems consoles lag consumer PCs in RAM, so I wouldn't be suprised at all to see 256MB in the PS3. For example, the PS2 has 32MB when PCs had 64 to 128MB, and I'm pretty sure the PS1 fell into the same ratio (a few MB RAM in the PS1?). Since modern PCs tend to have 256MB to 512MB or more, 256MB would probably sound about right at the time the PS3 is released. The next race won't be to put Linux on the PS3, but Windows! (I know the ISA will be a hurdle in this)
I wonder what medicine and aviation would be like if their devices were allowed to be built like Diebold builds their machines. Lives on the line vs. the life of our democracy on the line...I don't see that great a distinction.
It depends on how bad their previous UNIX system was. Any operating system can be neglected into oblivion. Also, if they got all new hardware to run Windows 2000, when the old hardware might have been ten-year-old 50MHz SMP boxes, then upgrade would be the right term. It's unfortunate that they didn't decide to upgrade to faster UNIX boxes, but that's politics for you.
I was planning to vote for Kerry or Alfred E Neuman (whats the difference?).
If you pay close attention, you will see that GWB is actually Alfred E. Neuman in disguise. I would post a conspiracy theory about the current administration being totally the product of a Mad Magazine satire, but I fear the odds of being right are too great to bear.
Just look at Solaris 10 (a big upgrade from Solaris 8 and 9) and the coming Niagara systems (32-way on a single chip and system board--thousands of threads and terabytes of RAM in a rack). Also, the SunOS kernel is nothing to laugh at. Java will always be debated, but it is fundamentally useful.
I've always had the impression that Sun does make mistakes, but they can stomach the lessons from them. For example, I'd hope that the limited market for MAJC (a dual core CPU) has at least given them a running start for UltraSPARC IV and Niagara. Some people say that IBM beat Sun to dual core with POWER, but Sun did have one--just not UltraSPARC.
The problem with the auto industry in the 1970s and 1980s is that they just produced utter stinking crap. I wonder if auto engineers from that period could have engineered their way out of an open box, looking at the terrible emissions controls (god-awful cobwebs of vacuum hoses and unreliable EGR values and carburetors from hell among other things) and the poor performance and economy of their cars. They put 90HP four-cylinder engines into 4000lb. SUVs back then...that's how terrible they were.
Really, the only thing I worry about regarding Sun is that no one is willing to pay top dollar for a battle-tank-like workstation (SPARCstations, early Ultras), so Sun has inevitably gone to less expensive cases that aren't built from riveted heavy gauge steel. Otherwise, their hardware is generally very good and Solaris is quite good, and ever year they do make real progress. I'm already debating if I want Solaris 10 at home.
Actually, graveyard is prefered by many.
In addition to fewer doctors:
1) No traffic to/from work.
2) Higher pay.
3) Quiet workplace.
4) Running errands without taking time off.
Quite a while back, one of my favorite summer jobs was third shift doing odd jobs at a factory. Idle assembly lines at night can be a little spooky, but it was generally a lot of fun to walk around during breaks. The only hard part was getting used to sleeping during the daytime.
If there is a shortage of nursing staff the solution should be to raise the incentive to be a nurse. That incentive is pay and benefits.
Er, that's exactly what's happening. Some hospitals will pay for your nursing degree, if you work for them after graduation. Also, nurses generally are paid more than other health care positions like paramedics and lab techs.
IMHO, one of the biggest problems with the employment arrangement is that workers only get to negotiate their wage once....
I agree. One thing that happened at my wife's workplace (healthcare-related) is that the market for wages is increasing faster than people's annual cost-of-living raises. This means new hires are sometimes paid more than people who have worked there for years. It's completely backwards.
The original poster's word choice was poor, and it caused the predictable stream of responses.
What should have been said is that one watt of energy input can transfer four watts of heat from one place to another. This is what heat pumps, refrigerators, and air conditioners do. With eletric resistance heat, all you can do is move that one watt of energy into the room as a direct conversion of electric energy into heat energy.
There is a reason poorer people have electric resistence heat and everyone else on the planet has heat pumps or gas/oil furnaces. Anyone who can get past the initial purchase price and see the future savings will pass up electric heat like passing up an obviously drugged-out hitchhiker with a mysterious duffle bag at 3am on a rural highway.
Of course, electric heat is okay for very short-term use to take the chill out of a bathroom, for example, but it doesn't belong anywhere else.
Bush can screw the enviroment, tax people into the ground, reinstate the draft, declare war on canada and mexico and still have the christian right's vote.
One thing that is disturbing about the proposed Marriage Amendment, for example, is that Bush, by supporting it, shows how little he understands the foundations for freedom in the USA. Any amendments designed to side-step the First Amendment are just wrong by any measure, regardless of how popular the amendment would or would not be. The amendment system is for adding new legal rights not for taking them away, and it is saddening that so many elected officials seem to not understand this.