During the mid 1990s my college used exactly this scheme when assigning names to student systems on the school's dorm network. Each student was assigned a hostname of the form username.student.rose-hulman.edu where username would be your school assigned login name. And you'd be able to receive e-mail as username@rose-hulman.edu and username@student.rose-hulman.edu.
I don't think the decision to mandate Free Software goes too far. Closed source software providers like Microsoft still have the choice to offer Open Source products of their own. Brazil's government made their choice, now it's the turn of the commercial software vendors. Either they provide open source software, or they do business elsewhere.
I think the boycott of SCO should be more extensive than merely refusing to purchase any of the Canopy Group's products or services. I think that all of the open source tools and applications authors should detect and drop support for SCO's operating systems (UNIX or Linux based).
Well, the matter of Compaq/HP dropping Alpha is another topic. My congratulations are directed to the porting efforts of the OpenVMS team for successfully port VMS to yet another architecture. Sadly, they don't get to choose their target platforms; that's a decision that's been controlled by their employers through the years. As engineers and as professionals, they're a very dedicated and respectable lot. They've persevered through the years in spite of (quite often stupid) decisions made by the business side.
The technical achievement of them designing their own CPU isn't that big of a deal. The difference between this chip and ones made by all those other companies you mentioned is that, none of those designs will have much market share because of Intel's absolute dominance in Western countries.
Given that China is estimated to be the world's second largest market for personal computers, this CPU, or certainly its descendants, could dominate that market--giving it a very respectable #2 position behind Intel's offerings.
It's a very shrewd and, if they can pull it off successfully, economically brilliant move on the part of China.
The targeted performance is close to PII. Not too bad for an embedded microprocessor at this moment... But, maybe a bit old when they commerically release it. But, as long as they can find applications into consumer electronics, the chip may get a good life like our good old Z80, HC11... Nevertheless, it is a good achievement consider the fact that the bulk of the team has no previous MCU design experience
Not too bad for an embedded processor? I guess the chip makers do spend so much money on marketing, conditioning people to believe that we need ridiculously fast processes to do useful computing, I shouldn't be surprised by this attitude. For 90% of useful computer work-- including things like web browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, programming, e-mail--a processor equivalent to a PII is overkill. In the mid-1990s, the Western world's technology sector was doing just fine with 486s and Pentiums in their desktops. So I'd say that if China's initial attempt at a processor is close to a PII in performance, that's something very noteworthy. They may be starting on the road to their own technological revolution quite a few years behind everyone else, but they're starting it on a lot better footing than we did.
And if China, as I'd imagine they're intending to do, shuts out the likes of Microsoft and Intel from their consumer PC market, that's both a huge blow to those companies and an amazing boon to the Chinese. China has a vast and untapped market, if China chooses to keep that market for itself, their own technology companies will end up very well off--maybe even rivaling in size the Intels and Microsofts of the West. []
My VAX 6420 will crush all of your PCs--literally.
I don't see what's so hard about working with this
license scheme. Make your own distribution of Pine called mypine-0.1.tar.gz. Within the tarball
there'll be some pine-X.YY.tar.gz, your patches, and an install script. Running the script would unpack the pristine pine distro and then apply your patches to it. Then configure, build, install.
What!? NetBSD/vax isn't cool because people don't talk about them in trendy magazines. Ooooh--how drole, HOW MAINSTREAM, how un-hip and sell-out can you get?
You sir wouldn't know cool if you sat on it and it froze to your ass.
There is nothing more hip in the world of computing than having you own 1/2 ton hunk of multiprocessing machinery chugging away in the basement. Get your candy-pants gigahertz AMD and P4 machines out of my sight YOU PATHETIC LITTLE PUKES.
Excellent.... Muh HAH HA HA!
It is time to awaken the VAX 6000-420 in all of its sinister
multiprocessing glory. Once brought to life in the lower dungeon of my
dwelling, all the lowly PCs residing within my neighbors domociles shall
quiver in fear from the resonating EM of the giant beast.
The Linux push is VERY real in the movie industry. There is a certain irony in the MPAA benefiting from Linux like this, but there's also a certain disconnect from the upper management levels and the the people driving the Linux initiatives. The reason Linux has this kind of presence in major studios is that you've got some very bright people pushing it at a grass-roots level. This was the case while I worked at DreamWorks.
The main selling point of course was the bottom-line. The cost of migrating very large bases of in-house developed software and systems to Windows from UNIX was just too much. Apart from retraining admins (well actually re-hiring then because none of us would stand having to use Windows based systems) and retooling the production pipelines which were often implemented in UNIX shell scripts, perl, C, and C++, Windows didn't make any sense. Has anyone ever succeeded at building a manageable render-farm using Windows PCs?
Another selling point here was one that Microsoft and PC vendors used to push their products over the like of SGI: "The PC hardware is so much cheaper, you'll save so much money." So with this, we were able to add: "But with Linux, the operating system is free, so you'll save even more." The hardware vendors were happy with this. They can still sell their PCs. And we were happy because we were able to use Microsoft's very own selling point of being cheaper to eat their lunch.
In the case of Shrek, I really think PDI should be given the greatest amount of credit for getting Linux in house and in use. DreamWorks was closely partnered with PDI but it was only later, after PDI had begun much of its Linux initiative, did they end up merging with them. PDI's success with Linux in turn help fostered the adoption of Linux being used at DreamWorks... along with, I might proudly add, a lot of pushing from myself and some of my fellow sysadmins--some of whom worked on Titanic at Digital Domain.
Another modest coup for the Open Source movement. The Gimp was no stranger to the DreamWorks digital efx and background departments. Adobe stopped supporting Photoshop on the SGI/IRIX platform, so a lot of our people turned to using Gimp under IRIX for various tasks. It was easier than switching over to one of the Macs to use Photoshop there.
The reality of Linux benefiting independent productions is also real. I'd invite people here to see the website for Major Damage, an independently produced 3D cartoon. It's a "spare-time" collaborative project being worked on by employees from a number of large and competing animation studios.
Ultimately, I think we're going to find that the movie industry will help legitimize the use of Linux in other business areas. Much of Craig Mundie's recent mud-slinging against the Open Source movement seems rather unfounded given the success Linux is finding in Hollywood.
Hop on your local USENET news server and checkout alt.folklore.computers. Or for you web-oriented folks, checkout Google's web based frontend for alt.folklore.computers. Many of the people responsible for the history of computers are lurking around there including people who worked on Multics, early IBM mainframes, and DEC PDP-10 systems.
People on the a.f.c newsgroup can provide first-hand accounts of the historical culture surrounding computers. They also offer detailed information on the technical aspects of these systems.
Someone else has already mentioned KFKI. This group was based out of Hungary. Their TPA series consisted of PDP-8, PDP-11, and VAX clones. Some of the systems were reverse engineered. Others were made up of smuggled parts. There's a decent Hungarian website covering some history of the TPA line. The site is maintained by Akos Vargo, who himself has a respectable collection of these old TPA machines.
I'd suggest going for the ultimate ergonomic computing experience. http://www.lazboy.com/furniture/category/recline/i ndex.html When I first got serious about my computing habit many years ago, I replaced the uncomfortable computer wheelie-chair with a discarded recliner. All you need is a keyboard and mouse with long enough cords, and an adequately sized monitor.
Slashdot Mirror
There's supporting evidence of this dating back to 1993 saved in Google's USENET archives.
The oldest bit of computing gear I make use of is an old mechanical calculator that dates from the early 1920s.
I don't think the decision to mandate Free Software goes too far. Closed source software providers like Microsoft still have the choice to offer Open Source products of their own. Brazil's government made their choice, now it's the turn of the commercial software vendors. Either they provide open source software, or they do business elsewhere.
I think the boycott of SCO should be more extensive than merely refusing to purchase any of the Canopy Group's products or services. I think that all of the open source tools and applications authors should detect and drop support for SCO's operating systems (UNIX or Linux based).
Well, the matter of Compaq/HP dropping Alpha is another topic. My congratulations are directed to the porting efforts of the OpenVMS team for successfully port VMS to yet another architecture. Sadly, they don't get to choose their target platforms; that's a decision that's been controlled by their employers through the years. As engineers and as professionals, they're a very dedicated and respectable lot. They've persevered through the years in spite of (quite often stupid) decisions made by the business side.
The technical achievement of them designing their own CPU isn't that big of a deal. The difference between this chip and ones made by all those other companies you mentioned is that, none of those designs will have much market share because of Intel's absolute dominance in Western countries.
Given that China is estimated to be the world's second largest market for personal computers, this CPU, or certainly its descendants, could dominate that market--giving it a very respectable #2 position behind Intel's offerings.
It's a very shrewd and, if they can pull it off successfully, economically brilliant move on the part of China.
The targeted performance is close to PII. Not too bad for an embedded microprocessor at this moment... But, maybe a bit old when they commerically release it. But, as long as they can find applications into consumer electronics, the chip may get a good life like our good old Z80, HC11... Nevertheless, it is a good achievement consider the fact that the bulk of the team has no previous MCU design experience
Not too bad for an embedded processor? I guess the chip makers do spend so much money on marketing, conditioning people to believe that we need ridiculously fast processes to do useful computing, I shouldn't be surprised by this attitude. For 90% of useful computer work-- including things like web browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, programming, e-mail--a processor equivalent to a PII is overkill. In the mid-1990s, the Western world's technology sector was doing just fine with 486s and Pentiums in their desktops. So I'd say that if China's initial attempt at a processor is close to a PII in performance, that's something very noteworthy. They may be starting on the road to their own technological revolution quite a few years behind everyone else, but they're starting it on a lot better footing than we did.
And if China, as I'd imagine they're intending to do, shuts out the likes of Microsoft and Intel from their consumer PC market, that's both a huge blow to those companies and an amazing boon to the Chinese. China has a vast and untapped market, if China chooses to keep that market for itself, their own technology companies will end up very well off--maybe even rivaling in size the Intels and Microsofts of the West.
[]
My VAX 6420 will crush all of your PCs--literally.
GET A MAC!
I don't see what's so hard about working with this license scheme. Make your own distribution of Pine called mypine-0.1.tar.gz. Within the tarball there'll be some pine-X.YY.tar.gz, your patches, and an install script. Running the script would unpack the pristine pine distro and then apply your patches to it. Then configure, build, install.
You sir wouldn't know cool if you sat on it and it froze to your ass.
There is nothing more hip in the world of computing than having you own 1/2 ton hunk of multiprocessing machinery chugging away in the basement. Get your candy-pants gigahertz AMD and P4 machines out of my sight YOU PATHETIC LITTLE PUKES.
So get a REAL MAN'S machine. Get a VAX!
My computer can crush your computer. :-P
I disagree about BSD dying. Afterall, it's too busy resurrecting old VAXen.
Viva la Daemon!
Viva la BSD!
Viva la VAX!
Excellent.... Muh HAH HA HA! It is time to awaken the VAX 6000-420 in all of its sinister multiprocessing glory. Once brought to life in the lower dungeon of my dwelling, all the lowly PCs residing within my neighbors domociles shall quiver in fear from the resonating EM of the giant beast.
The main selling point of course was the bottom-line. The cost of migrating very large bases of in-house developed software and systems to Windows from UNIX was just too much. Apart from retraining admins (well actually re-hiring then because none of us would stand having to use Windows based systems) and retooling the production pipelines which were often implemented in UNIX shell scripts, perl, C, and C++, Windows didn't make any sense. Has anyone ever succeeded at building a manageable render-farm using Windows PCs?
Another selling point here was one that Microsoft and PC vendors used to push their products over the like of SGI: "The PC hardware is so much cheaper, you'll save so much money." So with this, we were able to add: "But with Linux, the operating system is free, so you'll save even more." The hardware vendors were happy with this. They can still sell their PCs. And we were happy because we were able to use Microsoft's very own selling point of being cheaper to eat their lunch.
In the case of Shrek, I really think PDI should be given the greatest amount of credit for getting Linux in house and in use. DreamWorks was closely partnered with PDI but it was only later, after PDI had begun much of its Linux initiative, did they end up merging with them. PDI's success with Linux in turn help fostered the adoption of Linux being used at DreamWorks... along with, I might proudly add, a lot of pushing from myself and some of my fellow sysadmins--some of whom worked on Titanic at Digital Domain.
Another modest coup for the Open Source movement. The Gimp was no stranger to the DreamWorks digital efx and background departments. Adobe stopped supporting Photoshop on the SGI/IRIX platform, so a lot of our people turned to using Gimp under IRIX for various tasks. It was easier than switching over to one of the Macs to use Photoshop there.
The reality of Linux benefiting independent productions is also real. I'd invite people here to see the website for Major Damage, an independently produced 3D cartoon. It's a "spare-time" collaborative project being worked on by employees from a number of large and competing animation studios.
Ultimately, I think we're going to find that the movie industry will help legitimize the use of Linux in other business areas. Much of Craig Mundie's recent mud-slinging against the Open Source movement seems rather unfounded given the success Linux is finding in Hollywood.
Hop on your local USENET news server and checkout alt.folklore.computers. Or for you web-oriented folks, checkout Google's web based frontend for alt.folklore.computers. Many of the people responsible for the history of computers are lurking around there including people who worked on Multics, early IBM mainframes, and DEC PDP-10 systems. People on the a.f.c newsgroup can provide first-hand accounts of the historical culture surrounding computers. They also offer detailed information on the technical aspects of these systems.
Someone else has already mentioned KFKI. This group was based out of Hungary. Their TPA series consisted of PDP-8, PDP-11, and VAX clones. Some of the systems were reverse engineered. Others were made up of smuggled parts. There's a decent Hungarian website covering some history of the TPA line. The site is maintained by Akos Vargo, who himself has a respectable collection of these old TPA machines.
What about .orama?
I'd suggest going for the ultimate ergonomic computing experience. http://www.lazboy.com/furniture/category/recline/i ndex.html When I first got serious about my computing habit many years ago, I replaced the uncomfortable computer wheelie-chair with a discarded recliner. All you need is a keyboard and mouse with long enough cords, and an adequately sized monitor.