Hmmm...the summary of the article was terribly written, causing the understandable recoil, but if your summary is accurate, there are much fewer things to complain about. The things I can think of are:
- CPU power. IDEs tend to need a fast computer to work well, which is why vi is still so appealing to programmers. The "computers are so fast..." arguments always break down it seems.
- Using XML requires that the complete grammar of the language can be captured accurately by an XML schema. Would this always be possible?
- What happens when XML or its related standards change (again)? Plain ASCII or UNICODE storage is very stable.
However, I really like the display-independence (because 4-space tabs and braces on the same line are wrong;). Also, compiling might be faster, because the parsing is less complex.
I dunno. If I never have to see the XML, I might be able to tolerate it.
One section is titled "In Defense of Monopolies" and the author goes on to say that Microsoft being able to dictate a programming language onto people is a good thing, because it fits his agenda!
Base all first-year CS courses on this language. The metric for passing the course is simple: advance all the students who quit this class to the next year CS courses, and drop all the students who stick it out the whole semester because they are obviously tools.
Uh, the "pyramid" you refer to would only terminate if everyone stopped reproducing at the same time. So, you are saying SS really does work, just as long as people keep doing what people do.
IANAL, but it doesn't take one to read what other companies are doing. Are IBM, HP, Red Hat, and Sun slowing down due to SCO....nope. They are actually speeding up! Anyone who has any inkling of fear over SCO needs to get a hug and some hot cocoa and go worry about things that matter.
The bigger value for social security is not retirement, but for disability. If someone falls out of the workforce for reasons beyond their control, at least there is some money to buy food.
What's wrong with just letting people save money on their own for their retirement?
Nothing, if they know how. I certainly don't recall getting any finance training in public schools. It wasn't until well into college that I had any clue what 'future value' was.
If the government won't teach people how to take care of themselves through government schools, then the government has no choice but to do it for them. Sad, but true. GWB can't do both cut school funding _and_ privatize SS, it just won't work without some real educational overhaul.
Absolutely not. So, either you have privileged inside information or are lying, I can't tell, because I don't have privileged inside information to check against.
you are a marketer for Sun
No. The main problem is that it is impossible to have any sort of real conversation on Slashdot. For example, the earlier point was about "stealing" from Linux without giving back (a troll), and I pointed out that the borrowing and giving goes both ways way beyond the kernel and networking. FOSS and commercial software are an _ecosystem_, and I have learned my lesson to ignore narrow-minded trolls from now on.
You say there is not much market for top machines. IBM, HP, and SGI all seem to think otherwise. They are developing very large systems.
The really huge computers are all for government labs, which are not in huge abundance. The other markets for these computers can be satisfied with niche players like Cray and SGI. Sun's sweet spot is for business servers and medium-scale engineering, IMO. The fact of the matter is that people want high flop/$ in a supercomputer, which is why it appears that x86 dominates the top 500. Outside of supercomputing, flop/$ takes a backseat to many other factors.
One other thing about the top 500 that isn't advertised is how much of it is subsidized by manufacturers discounting their hardware just for the PR. IBM dumping out a supercomputer is like Bill Gates giving a couch to Goodwill. And IBM knows that fanboys on Slashdot will eat it up like free crack.
My understanding is that the top ppl spent a lot of time looking at Linux and then "borrowed" ideas.
How can Sun borrow ideas that aren't in Linux? Their TCP/IP stack leapfrogs Linux, for example. Solaris Containers don't exist in Linux. dtrace doesn't exist in Linux.
Solaris does now use GNOME, but Sun is an active participant in GNOME...not exactly borrowing. Overall, Sun is a pretty good FOSS citizen (I'd figure OpenOffice.org is worth the GNU tools in/usr/sfw).
No, my ID says "fan", not "employee" or "astroturfer". Big difference.
So the advantage of SGI is their interconnect. That's fine, but my original intended point was that Sun and SGI don't even live in the same market universe, meaning comparisons between them aren't very fruitful.
Wait till SGI roll out their 2048 CPU single system image systems.
Will they be able to before Itanium gets canned? Let's hope so.
As far as scaling goes, UltraSPARC _does_ scale that big. The crossbar is a red herring. If Sun saw a place for themselves in that market, they would make a new interconnect. They have engineers, too, you know.
I think you are just a benchmark fanboy. If Sun's next CPU manages to edge out Itanium the next go-around, can I use sed to swap the names in your post above?
Of course, Sun is hobbled by that Open Boot nonsense, where you have to type an absolutely absurd amount of stuff to specify a device.
Of course, if I have a dozen network ports, several hard drives with several operating systems, and another dozen CD-ROM and DVD drives, OpenBoot will allow me to easily boot from any of them. Also, I recommend you look up documentation regarding devalias and nvramrc.
OpenBoot is so superior to the PC BIOS that it is the main reason I would hesitate to buy another PC.
They could be, because UltraSPARC will scale that big, but they don't, because Sun understands that practically no one buys 2048 CPU single-image systems.
Still, that literally blows Sun's biggest machine out of the water.
Would it have ever occurred to you that Sun doesn't sell bigger than 72-way SMP, right now, because that is what their target customers want? UltraSPARC IV can scale to 1000s of CPUs by design, just like Itanium.
Since you seem to know so much about SGI, I'd like you to tell us how many Altix machines have been sold. You might find that the market for 2048-CPU single image servers is rather limited. A niche, you might say.
why would you buy a sparc server running Linux when you could buy an Altix, or a POWER5 (or zSeries if you want a real mainframe)?
1) Sun is cheaper. Yes, this is true.
2) OpenSolaris is coming, soon. Free as in speech. Solaris 10 is free as in beer.
3) Sun Opterons with Solaris 10 are breaking some records.
4) Sun UltraSPARCs still manage to hold their own, too (UltraSPARC IV can keep up with Opteron in SPEC rate benchmarks, but can go up to much bigger SMP).
The only reason sparcs are still being sold is the solaris on sparc legacy.
Solaris installs a number of services for enterprise environments, because Sun knows what hand feeds them. These environments are always behind firewalls and IDS. With minimal effort (well documented, BTW), Solaris can be hardened quite effectively for web-facing roles.
Slashdot Mirror
It's just proof that the good ideas never die, but that people will always come up with stupider syntax for them.
(yes, I know what I misspelled, spelling trolls)
Hmmm...the summary of the article was terribly written, causing the understandable recoil, but if your summary is accurate, there are much fewer things to complain about. The things I can think of are:
- CPU power. IDEs tend to need a fast computer to work well, which is why vi is still so appealing to programmers. The "computers are so fast..." arguments always break down it seems.
- Using XML requires that the complete grammar of the language can be captured accurately by an XML schema. Would this always be possible?
- What happens when XML or its related standards change (again)? Plain ASCII or UNICODE storage is very stable.
However, I really like the display-independence (because 4-space tabs and braces on the same line are wrong
I dunno. If I never have to see the XML, I might be able to tolerate it.
One section is titled "In Defense of Monopolies" and the author goes on to say that Microsoft being able to dictate a programming language onto people is a good thing, because it fits his agenda!
Base all first-year CS courses on this language. The metric for passing the course is simple: advance all the students who quit this class to the next year CS courses, and drop all the students who stick it out the whole semester because they are obviously tools.
Even worse, it sets yet another example for kids that they don't have to be talented or smart to get ahead.
At least we know, now, why their music sounds like shit.
You know, in addition to flying cars and conveyer-belt highways, we were promised smell-o-vision for our computers! What a rip off!
Uh, the "pyramid" you refer to would only terminate if everyone stopped reproducing at the same time. So, you are saying SS really does work, just as long as people keep doing what people do.
IANAL, but it doesn't take one to read what other companies are doing. Are IBM, HP, Red Hat, and Sun slowing down due to SCO....nope. They are actually speeding up! Anyone who has any inkling of fear over SCO needs to get a hug and some hot cocoa and go worry about things that matter.
The bigger value for social security is not retirement, but for disability. If someone falls out of the workforce for reasons beyond their control, at least there is some money to buy food.
There is no food problem, only people problem.
What's wrong with just letting people save money on their own for their retirement?
Nothing, if they know how. I certainly don't recall getting any finance training in public schools. It wasn't until well into college that I had any clue what 'future value' was.
If the government won't teach people how to take care of themselves through government schools, then the government has no choice but to do it for them. Sad, but true. GWB can't do both cut school funding _and_ privatize SS, it just won't work without some real educational overhaul.
Are you calling them liars?
Absolutely not. So, either you have privileged inside information or are lying, I can't tell, because I don't have privileged inside information to check against.
you are a marketer for Sun
No. The main problem is that it is impossible to have any sort of real conversation on Slashdot. For example, the earlier point was about "stealing" from Linux without giving back (a troll), and I pointed out that the borrowing and giving goes both ways way beyond the kernel and networking. FOSS and commercial software are an _ecosystem_, and I have learned my lesson to ignore narrow-minded trolls from now on.
You say there is not much market for top machines. IBM, HP, and SGI all seem to think otherwise. They are developing very large systems.
The really huge computers are all for government labs, which are not in huge abundance. The other markets for these computers can be satisfied with niche players like Cray and SGI. Sun's sweet spot is for business servers and medium-scale engineering, IMO. The fact of the matter is that people want high flop/$ in a supercomputer, which is why it appears that x86 dominates the top 500. Outside of supercomputing, flop/$ takes a backseat to many other factors.
One other thing about the top 500 that isn't advertised is how much of it is subsidized by manufacturers discounting their hardware just for the PR. IBM dumping out a supercomputer is like Bill Gates giving a couch to Goodwill. And IBM knows that fanboys on Slashdot will eat it up like free crack.
Are you saying that Solaris remained uncompromised for as long as it did even with that many ports open?
Or download Solaris and get them all in one bundle.
My understanding is that the top ppl spent a lot of time looking at Linux and then "borrowed" ideas.
/usr/sfw).
How can Sun borrow ideas that aren't in Linux? Their TCP/IP stack leapfrogs Linux, for example. Solaris Containers don't exist in Linux. dtrace doesn't exist in Linux.
Solaris does now use GNOME, but Sun is an active participant in GNOME...not exactly borrowing. Overall, Sun is a pretty good FOSS citizen (I'd figure OpenOffice.org is worth the GNU tools in
Actually, I can't take credit for the AC post.
You must be from the marketing department...
No, my ID says "fan", not "employee" or "astroturfer". Big difference.
So the advantage of SGI is their interconnect. That's fine, but my original intended point was that Sun and SGI don't even live in the same market universe, meaning comparisons between them aren't very fruitful.
Wait till SGI roll out their 2048 CPU single system image systems.
Will they be able to before Itanium gets canned? Let's hope so.
As far as scaling goes, UltraSPARC _does_ scale that big. The crossbar is a red herring. If Sun saw a place for themselves in that market, they would make a new interconnect. They have engineers, too, you know.
I think you are just a benchmark fanboy. If Sun's next CPU manages to edge out Itanium the next go-around, can I use sed to swap the names in your post above?
Of course, Sun is hobbled by that Open Boot nonsense, where you have to type an absolutely absurd amount of stuff to specify a device.
Of course, if I have a dozen network ports, several hard drives with several operating systems, and another dozen CD-ROM and DVD drives, OpenBoot will allow me to easily boot from any of them. Also, I recommend you look up documentation regarding devalias and nvramrc.
OpenBoot is so superior to the PC BIOS that it is the main reason I would hesitate to buy another PC.
Is Sun better than that these days?
They could be, because UltraSPARC will scale that big, but they don't, because Sun understands that practically no one buys 2048 CPU single-image systems.
Still, that literally blows Sun's biggest machine out of the water.
Would it have ever occurred to you that Sun doesn't sell bigger than 72-way SMP, right now, because that is what their target customers want? UltraSPARC IV can scale to 1000s of CPUs by design, just like Itanium.
Since you seem to know so much about SGI, I'd like you to tell us how many Altix machines have been sold. You might find that the market for 2048-CPU single image servers is rather limited. A niche, you might say.
why would you buy a sparc server running Linux when you could buy an Altix, or a POWER5 (or zSeries if you want a real mainframe)?
1) Sun is cheaper. Yes, this is true.
2) OpenSolaris is coming, soon. Free as in speech. Solaris 10 is free as in beer.
3) Sun Opterons with Solaris 10 are breaking some records.
4) Sun UltraSPARCs still manage to hold their own, too (UltraSPARC IV can keep up with Opteron in SPEC rate benchmarks, but can go up to much bigger SMP).
The only reason sparcs are still being sold is the solaris on sparc legacy.
This is an opinion, and many people disagree.
Solaris installs a number of services for enterprise environments, because Sun knows what hand feeds them. These environments are always behind firewalls and IDS. With minimal effort (well documented, BTW), Solaris can be hardened quite effectively for web-facing roles.