Posts by Matt Bryant 9690 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2007
<Snarls @ IBM and hp> See, it's not just me asking!
We have about two-dozen old DL320s with Celerons which have been re-used already about three times, they're currently running Red Hat with only 768MB of RAM each for some low-power webapps. I'd love to migrate the lot onto blades but the savings just don't add up to the hassle yet, even if we used VMware. Two separate blade chassis (for redundancy) with a dozen Atom CPUs in each would do nicely, please!
Strangely enough, I have seen more OSS-based projects during boom times than recessions. From past experience, what happens in a recession is the boards get even more risk-adverse. Whilst stretching existing kit and software to the limit becomes the order of the day, when it comes to new projects that can't be delayed or scrapped the drive is to get them in on-time and to budget ASAP, and so they see proven stacks as providing the best guarantee of that. Unless the open source solution is just as proven as the OTS (off-the-shelf) one, those whose jobs depend on it being right will plump for the OTS choice as they see it as being less of a risk.
I can remember going to the boardroom in another company in 2001 with two solutions for a business requirement - one of proven software (including Oracle) on UNIX servers; the other Red Hat on x86 with OSS software from several sources, which had not been tested before, and would need some inhouse coding to get it all to work. Despite the OSS solution being less than a third of the price (even after including a 200% costing for the inhouse work), we could only project the likely success of the OSS solution as a 90% certainty, whereas the OTS solution was already proven. The board went for the OTS solution.
I see it as more likely that existing kit will need to last even longer, so lots of upgrades and extended contract negotiations to look forward to. OSS like Linux will get a look in for situations when it can show it has a proven option with minimal disruption and risk.
"Now all they need to do is develop a safer Israeli mortar that won't land on a Gaza school and kill the children inside." I'm assuming that infantile attempt at a political slander refers to the unfortunate incident when people taking shelter at the UNWRA school in Jabilaya in the Gaza Strip were killed by Israeli tank fire? Can't see how that managed to slip past the eagle-eyed forum moderator.
If you'd bothered to do a little more research you'd have read that John Ging of UNWRA has been forced to admit that the people killed were outside the school grounds in the street where HAMAS was firing at Israeli forces, that the UNWRA school was undamaged, and nobody was even wounded inside the school grounds. You may also have wondered why HAMAS chose to fire from right beside the school, knowing that Israeli return fire was highly likely, or why HAMAS did not see fit to clear the area of civilians before firing at the Israelis. Or even that HAMAS and its affiliates have a history of firing mortars and rockets not only from beside UNWRA buildings but even from inside their grounds. Oh, but then I suppose a little research is the last thing you want anyone to do.
I also assume you wouldn't want anyone to realise that HAMAS has regularly fired mortars and rockets at Israeli towns such as Ashkelon with the deliberate intent of killing civillians. And it seems no co-incidence that the most common timing of the firings are the times of day (early morning and early afternoon) when they are most likely to kill Israeli school children going to or returning from school. Or that said rockets and mortars have hit a number of schools, playgrounds and kindergarens. Such a different approach to the IDF, who take care to limit the number of civillian casualties, despite HAMAS hiding and fighting from amongst the civillian population.
So, I'm really quite comfortable with the Israellis having nucleur power and nukes, but I'd really not want your buddies in HAMAS or their sponsors in Iran having nuke weapons, and only nuke power if completely safeguarded by Western controls.
A dirty bomb is the nuke equivalent of popping your vacuum cleaner bag in your living room - everything gets coated in yucky dust, but you can clean it up. A nuke bomb is equivalent to putting a few sticks of dynamite in the vacuum cleaner - the dust is secondary to the massive damage to your whole house. In short, you will need a new home. In order to build a dirty bomb to irradiate a really large area like a city requires a really large explosive device and a lot of radioactive dust, perferabley exploded at exactly the right height over the city. This is a lot harder to deliver than a nucleur bomb which can be simply loaded into a large truck and parked close to the city center, or stuck on top of simple artillery rockets like the SCUD family. The nucleur bomb does so much more damage and is easier to deliver, making it a much more desireable weapon.
Also, whilst biological and chemical weapons (and dirty bombs are effectively chemical weapons) are potentially extremely hazardous to an unprepared population or military target, if preparations are made their effect is much lessened, and clean up can massively reduce the long-term impact. There is no real preparation for a nuke bomb other than evacuating a large area and kissing goodbye to it for the next few thousand years. The blast impact alone will destroy any form of buiding for a large zone around ground zero.
So, whilst we don't want certain people getting dirty bombs, we really don't want them getting their hands on a nuke.
"There is of course still a problem, alot of nations don't like the idea of being dependent on somebody elses technology for vital parts of the national infastructure (strange I know)....." Yes, us in the West aren't too keen on our economies being dependent on Middle Eastern, African, South American or Far Eastern oil despots and dictators. So what's the difference, we get our oil from them, why can't they buy nuke fuel from us? Try and formulate a reply without falling back on tired and stereotypical portrayal of the West as racist.
"...."Wait, you mean you're going to build and man these plants with your own people?"...." Take a look at Saudi Arabia, if you see anyone doing any manual labour in places like Riyadh then it is almost always a foreigner. I have seen a complete office bulding built, commissioned with furniture and electrics, computing systems installed, and all without a single Arab hand getting dirty. Of the staff, we had one Arab, a "sales manager" who was employed simply because his uncle worked for one of the ministries, nudge-nudge, wink-wink. Even the receptionists were Lebanese. One of the great challenges facing many Gulf countries is not just the low levels of literacy and skills, but that many Arabs just can't seem to be bothered to do the jobs a guy from Sri Lanka or Ethiopia will do for a fraction of the price. All their high-tech infrastructure such as telecoms are still heavily dependent on foreign skills, even though the majority of companies involved are Arab-owned. They simply find it easier to buy-in foreign skills rather than develop their own (sound familiar?). I can quite comfortably guarantee you that any nuke station in Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia or Kuwait will be run - if not by a foreign contracted company - then predominantly by foreigners.
Libya and places like Syria, which have a chequered career with the West but still use lots of Western tech, people and knowledge, may try and Arabise the projects for national control's sake, but they will still be heavily dependent on foreigners (case in point - despite Ghaddafi Arabising his military, when the Russians packed up and left his Air Force couldn't keep their jets serviceable or even fire their SCUD missiles). Russia, China, the US and European nations are all sending nuke sales teams to the Middle East to try and grab a bit of the action, and supplying "safe" fuel would not only make this an easier sell for Governments but also mean more money for the companies involved. Ironicly, it is the Israelis that have the most to gain from the idea of the Arabs buying "safe" fuel from the West, mainly because they already have their own nuke weapons.
Hold on a sec, I thought all that "community organising" The Big O did there (his so-called qualification to run as Prez) made it like a paradise? Why on Earth would anyone need to commit any crime after Obama had solved all their problems? What, you mean the nasty people didn't just pack up and go away because Obama asked them to? Well, don't worry, I'm sure it will still work as a foriegn policy.
The Chicago police should shut up and simply use CraigsList as an information source, it's probably pushing their arrest rate up nicely. As the article says, CraigsList has already cut a deal with the State over their listings and will remove any that are brought to their attention as illegal. Or is it election time soon and this is just some local politician trying to look tough on crime by avoiding the real causes and blaming everything on that nasty interweb? Maybe CraigsList just didn't know any of Blago's and Obama's friends.....
Not really sure who's to blame or who threw their toys out of the pram first, but maybe it will mean GPL'ing Java. That should hold them up for a while! Why? Well, because every Java install for years has seemed to grow in size at a quadratic rate, and STILL manages to be slower than mollasses. Yes, I want Java around to keep M$ in line, but can they please make it WORK better before they add in more unwanted and unneeded bloat?
Anyway, Google will probably win any big argument simply by going and playing on their own.
Fun pub game for admins - convince your mates why you think product/technology X is going to be the next SMS or the next WAP. So far, general (partialy-inebriated) consensus is cloud still looks like WAP, but virtualisation has already become the SMS of the server world. Current fave topics for such team-meetings-cum-booze-ups are FCOE (Son of iSCSI?), SSDs (nice but f*ck-a-duck price), and VDI (the rehash of the rehash of the remake of terminals). All debaters welcome, but you get an automatic three-rounds-at-the-bar penalty if you bring a Powerpoint pres!
/the public house is calling!
"Hewlett-Packard can't afford to have small and medium businesses become deer in the headlights of the economic meltdown. And so, the company is starting to kick out deals and services to make it easier for SMBs to acquire its servers and storage despite the uncertain business climate...." Not quite. This new product has been on the roadmap since well before the economic crash, and is a follow on to the ISEE product that already provides a similar phone-home integration with hp SIM. Whilst I'm sure hp will push it as a great way to cut on (PFY) costs, it is not a repsonse to the economic downturn, just a development of an existing technology line. I can remember a similar tech for hp-ux servers based on scripts provided by hp for UK mission-critical and business-critical customers at least as long ago as 2000. I can't remember what the Netserver equivalent was but it was a plug-in card. Any Netserver survivors out there care to fill in the blank?
For us, the best bit is ISEE and SIM talk more sense than hp's Bangalore helldesk, and I'm sure getting proper diagnostic info automatically saves hp just as much time and resource as it does the customer. Winners all round (except for the PFYs)!
After years of using ATi Radeon cards I got thoroughly sick of the increasingly buggy drivers last year and switched to nVidia. The stability is refreshing, the performance great, and I wouldn't be tempted back to ATi/AMD even if they managed to sell their graphics cards for half the cost of the nVidia equivalent. Whilst I rate AMD CPUs as top-notch, I really hope they get some AMD people sorting out the ATi part of the company, and fast!
"Don't the armed forces agencies already use deadly force within the bounds of the US? Or is NCIS just fiction?" As explained to me, the US has a bit of a different legal setup to European countries like the UK when it comes to using military power at home. In the UK, suppose a group of armed terrorists are holed up, then the Government has a very simple means to call in troops such as the SAS to mount an assualt. The SAS always has a team ready to go 24x7x365 for just situations as us Europeans have learnt from bitter experience with people like the IRA, PFLP, PLO, ETA, Red Army Faction aka Baader-Meinhoff Group, Black September, etc, etc. In the UK, the Police maintain armed units for dealing with armed criminals, but the real anti-terror situations like hijackings and sieges such as the Iranian Embassy affair in 1980 get dealt with by military units like the SAS, and it is up to the Cabinet as to when they get called in.
As I understand it, in the US the law does not allow such a simple process, instead there are limits on the delpoyment of troops such as special forces inside US terrirories, even the National Guard needs a declaration of an emergency, and they are not specialist troops. Usually it is crime-fighting agenceies like the ATF and FBI arguing with local and state Police over whom has jurisdiction and control of a situation, and they are primarily trained for dealing with armed criminals. Waco illustrated just what a mess this can result in, and that was against half-trained but determined fanatics. Imagine if they had been properly trained and well-armed fanatics like the kind that attacked Mumbai.
Fortunately for Americans, domestic terror attacks in the US have been rare, something even the loudest Obamatron will have to admit is largely due to Dhubya. As I understand it, Bush was looking for a means to quickly deploy and use US special forces for Waco-like situations should AQ go to a similar hijackings and sieges commited by numerous Palestinian terror groups in Europe and the Middle East. At the moment, any such attack would be dealt with by the local police, state police and FBI, and it could be quite a while and q big body-count before a real anti-terrorist team gets to the scene. As the recent attack on Mumbai illustrated, even armed police can be overcome by well-trained, well-armed and determined fanatics, and holding back to discuss which government agency does what just gives them more time to kill innocents. In the UK we have a set of quick response guidelines which enable the use of troops such as the SAS very quickly if required - at the moment, in the US, Im told you don't, which means more people could die.
I know the Obamatrons like to hold such examples up as "Bushitler fascist tyranny", but the reality is burying your head in the sand just makes you an even easier target. Just ask the people of Mumbai.
I thought the big advantage of the Kindle devices was the electronic ink is low in power requirement and therefore led to long battery life? Surely having a screen of stationary text on the iBone and iDouche will still require juice for the display and consequently run the battery flat even faster?
Mind you, I don't think the iDiots do reading.
/Well, the Sunshiners are slowing down today so it's time to start flaming the fanbois....
Same old Dave - lot's of frothing but no answer to the question.
"....Apple Macontosh running MacOSX on the Intel architecture, binaries not compatible with both Intel & PPC run just fine, because the Operating System vendor had placed the intelligence into the Intel based Operating System to execute the PPC portions of the binary....." Nope, Transitive licensed their emulator tech to Apple in the form of the Rosetta software, which allowed Apple to escape PowerPC and get onto the Intel bandwagon. The same tech is used in the Quick Transit software to allow Slowaris 9 binaries to be run unchanged on top of Red Hat on Itanium, which is a lot easier than the painful migration to Slowairs x86 and a darn sight faster than Slowaris on x86 or SPARC. And what does MacOS have to do with Slowaris, or do you really have so much of a muddle in your mind you think MacOS and Slowaris are somehow related? And you still didn't explain how different endian x86 and SPARC can run the same binaries, but that may be because they can't.
Your confusion clearly caught you.
"Matt Bryant, in another article comment, claimed endian-ness was the reason why SPARC machine code was incompatible with Intel machine code....." Actually, I claimed it was one reason why porting from SPARC to x64 was much harder than SPARC to Itanium, but don't let a little truth get in the way of your frothing rant.
"....- does not understand computer architecture" I'm now waiting with amused interest to hear how our Anonymous Sunshiner would like to claim that having different endian CPU designs has no effect on code migration. Not holding my breath, but mainly because I'm still laughing at him.
/and pointing.
Aw, is someone a bit upset? It's always fun when the Sunshiners fall back on basic name-calling. Scarily, this is also the tactic I've seen used by Sun salesgrunts. All the vendors do customer analysis, they're quite open about the fact they are looking for the influencers and decision-makers, whom has the say on money and whom is the person that really needs to be onboard before a deal can be struck. What I first noticed a few years ago was that the Sun salesteam were not just using it as a means of identifying positives, but also as a way to try and negatively influence decisions. As soon as they identified someone in our business that backed another vendor or voiced doubts about Sun, the Sun salesgrunts would start making derisive comments, belittling their knowledge or experience, and trying to exclude them from the conversation. Sometimes it got to the point where Sun was not only trying to tell us who we could have on a project but how we should test systems, all with the aim of making their products look better in shootouts. At that point we told Sun to change the salesteam. Seems things haven't changed.
"s he for real?...." Actually, no, I'm just a voice in your head. You'd best go book a session with the shrink, otherwise I might stay in here and really make you suffer....
"....Does he actually have a job?...." Well, as voices in your head go, I have a very good job, thanks, though it is very echoey in here what with the large amounts of empty space
".....I certainly wouldn't have time to post so many long rants....." Well, it doesn't take five minutes to formulate replies to the pointless FUD posted by you and your fellow Sunshiners. After all, I'm in your head, I see your fear, and I already know when you're lying.....
/psych off.
"....No doubt about it, Itanium is in serious trouble....." Yeah, being the number one chip in the lucrative UNIX high-end is such a pain.
"....Intel has said that all the money made on Itanium so far has been reinvested into the development of next versions....." Really? I've never heard anything of the sort. But then at least Intel has the money to put into development, whereas Sun's dwindling reserves and continual losses means Sun doesn't have the money to invest in any development for long, hence their desperation to get Slowaris supported by other server vendors before they have to pink slip the whole Sun hardware organistaion.
".....Sales of Itanium are too low to justify anything after Tukwila, so Intel is going to have to dump the chip...." Now what have we told you Sunshiners about how just because you wish it was so it doesn't make it happen? Intel has the winning hand, it has Xeon cleaning up in the low-to-mid server bizz and Itanium for everything above that, so it makes strategic sense for Intel to maintain Itanium too keep the pressure on IBM (they don't have to worry about Sun anymore). Itanium is the only option to Power and IBM's mainframes, areas Intel would dearly like to feast on, and only Itanium gets them up there. Nehalem will be very good, but still not good enough to take on Power. The high-end has become a two-horse race and neither horse is Sun's.
"....But if customers are faced with a dead-end processor after having invested big bucks into new Superdomes, HP can kiss the high-end UNIX market goodbye....." But seeing as Superdome sales are growing, and hp is dominating the high-end UNIX space, it would seem hp don't have to worry at all. Face it - as Rock, if it ever arrives, can only scale to eight sockets, leaving Sun reliant on the uncertain future of SPARC64 in the M-series servers, Sun has kissed goodbye to the high-end for good. And the announcement that Slowairs will be sold on hp ProLiant means Sun has just kissed goodbye to the low-to-mid-end server bizz too. Like I warned you a while back, you better start learning Linux fast!
RE: David Halko
"....because that is not what was being contested, Jesper....." No, you said Slowaris was fastest all the time in all situations, and then posted a load of cherrypicked, out-of-date and invalid benchmark results, which Jesper then showed up nicely.
"....There was a FUD statement, that was clearly wrong, and I demonstrated it. That was the point....." No, you merely showed for a fact that Sun can't compete on performance anymore, and hasn't been able for a while, as shown by Jesper's figures and my own posts.
"....With Integer and floating point, 1 year older Niagra is a little behind. Niagra is still clearly competitive, and is not "being trashed (like everyone else)"....." Naiagara lags today's Xeon on performance and is massively more expensive, so it is most certainly uncompetitive.
"....The Intel Core i7 is a nice chip, it has it's problems with some architecture aspects with throughput, but it is still a nice chip. Niagra has problems with single threaded applications, but it is still a nice chip....." Yes, but businesses don't base decisions on "niceness", they want the best performance with the best reliability for the lowest price, and that means Niagara is dead in anything other than the webserving niche.
"....Really, that is OK, since SUN sells Intel based platforms....." If Ponytail or the customers had any faith in the Galaxy range then Sun wouldn't be so desperate to sign up hp's ProLiant. The truth is Galaxy is like the rest of Sun's products - a limited range with poor features, limited management tools and from a limited range of unintegrated products. Sun just outsourced their Xeon server business to hp, IBM and Dell because those vendors have real integrated x64 ranges with a future.
"....This does not demonstrate a problem for open vendors like SUN, where they are now CPU agnostic. All their software runs on multiple architectures....." All their software in binarily incompatible from one platform to the next. This triples the expense of developing for Slowaris, which is why developers will simply take the easy path of developing for the larger Linux base first and then making the simple port to Slowaris x64. Most won't bother making three different SPARC binaries for Niagara, Rock and SPARC64 (well, Rock is dead so they actually won't bother to make the other two). So again, Slowaris will lag the real open product, Linux.
"....People just have to just get away from all the bigotry and just enjoy the benefits of innovation that various vendors bring to the marketplace!" Cough*kettle*cough. Well, you enjoy your Sunshiner fantasy, just don't expect the rest of us in the real world to fall in step.
"With Unisys dumping itanium and SGI refusing to confirm/deny Tukwila support you will see a huge drop in HP Unix and subsequently Itanium sales in 2009" Whilst a refreshingly short bit of Sunshine, how exactly do you come by that conclusion? SGI and Unisys are nothing to do with hp, so if anything both events offer MORE opportunities for hp Integrity sales. Do you Sunshiners even stop a half-second to think before you post your twaddle?
Presuming you're just reading from The Reg article "Server sales cratered in Q4, says IDC", you no doubt didn't want to post the bit about how the only growing sector of server sales is blades, up 16.1%, with hp having 54.8% of that. Sun's share of the blades cake is too small to merit more than the passing chuckle. Or that whilst the economic downturn has knocked hp's server sales down 10.1% to $3.91bn, Sun's server sales are worse hit down 14.1% at only $1.25bn. So hp aren't dropping sales as fast as Sun, and still making more than three times as much revenue. Looks like more red ink for Ponytail and more value off the Sun market cap!
".....That's a stupid comment even coming from you.... HP-UX only runs on one vendors hardware, that being HP's. To say they have a "wie" range of drivers is just stupid. The last I saw, Solaris was certified on over 500 different servers. How many different servers does HP-UX run on?...."
And into the trap walks gormless Bill! I couldn't wait for you to tell me how many incomplete and incompatible bits of kit Slowaris runs on. Hp has carefully produced solutions and drivers for all their customer needs, and you can look them up on the hp websites and check EXACTLY what is supported with what, which server with which card with which storage device with which firmware, etc, etc. Sun has problems getting even it's own stuff to work! Try looking up the Sun support matrix for Slowaris x86 cluster on Dell Poweredge with Falconstor and Adaptec iSCSI cards - oh wait, you can't! You have to take pot luck and cross your fingers and just hope it all works. Compare to even Linux like Red Hat which has far better support and far better documentation, and customer trust from years of use in real business environments. The real giggle is Sun's desperate attempt to copy Linux and then an even better laugh is when they try and play it off against a real enterprise solution like hp-ux on Integrity.
RE: David Halko
"....There is not a significant software base for Itanium to draw from, which differentiates Itanium it from Intel Windows x86, Intel Windows x64, SPARC Solaris, Intel Linux, or even new Open Source variants like Intel Solaris?...." <Yawn> Dave, your Sun FUD is out of date yet again. Sunshiners were desperately pushing that line in 1998, it's been over a decade and hp-ux not only has a vast number of applications, it has all the business critical ones, which is why it is cleaning up in the UNIX high-end. If hp-ux didn't have the applications then the dmoniation of the high-end by Integrity simply wouldn't be happening. What you also forgot to mention was that hp-ux on Itanium has a wie range of drivers which allows it to meet many differeing custoemr requirments - Slowaris x86 has a cripplingly poor set of drivers that limits the amount of hardware it can run on.
"....SPARC is THE major revenue resource for SUN...." Which is why Sun is still making a loss, and has a market cap that threatens it with delisting. Intel and hp have much healthier financial positions and make a profit from Itanium. I know understanding finances and business is just not a strong point with Sunshiners so I'll spell it out for you - hp and Intel have the money and reason to continue with Itanium; Sun does not have the money and can't decide whether it is a software company or a hardware company.
"....can see the vision behind x64, SPARC, and Power in the future with servers - I am not sure if Itanium has any long term viability...." Which is why you have a lowly Mcjob as a Sun marketing droid. Hp Integrity is domintaing the UNIX high-end, this means major corporations are going with Itanium and hp-ux for business critical solutions. These customers are both very demanding and very careful - they don't buy without a lot of consideration and reassurance that what they are buying is both vaild and has a future. They employ the top people in IT to make those decisions for them, people with obviously a far higher degree of knowledge, experience and vision than yourself. Bleat all you like but the marketing figures expose your lies - when the customer has to bet his buisness on the job, he chooses hp-ux on Integrity, and not SPARC.
RE: Anonymous Coward
"Agreed. Itanium has no stickiness... Users would and could move to X64 without ever looking back....." Which just goes to show you know nothing about compilers, chip designs or the market. From the start, hp and Intel designed Itanium to be an easy porting platform. An example is that is equal endian, meaning it can feed registers from the highest or lowest value first. Older chip designs were one or the other, making their code incompatible even if they came from the same families. The AMD and Intel x64 desings are different endian to SPARC, which is why Slowairs x86 and SPARC binaries are not compatible, you don't just need to recompile you need to rewrite them, making porting off SPARC Slowaris onto Slowairs x86 much more difficult. Nehalem is still not equal endian and does not have the large amount of registers Itanium has, so whilst it will be a much better chip than anything coming out of Sun or Fujitsu, it will still not be the equal of Itanium, and still not be as good a programming or porting platform as Itanium. As for the rest of your drivel about "Itanium has nowhere to go", please read my reply to David above.
"....Matt, your dislike for Sun is legend...." What you Sunshiners fail to undertand is us customers don't want Sun kit. We are not buying it not because we have an axe to grind but because Sun have let us down in the past and don't provide a future we consider ether convincing or one we want to bet our businesses on.
".....and it makes any opinion that you posit without merit....." That's so Sun - don't listen to the customers, don't listen to complaints, blank out any argument that contradicts your core beliefs, just keep pushing Slowairs on SPARC regardless. Sun needs to wake up and start listening to the customers a LOT more.
"....You constantly "defend" Itanium by bashing Sun....." Actually if you look at the forums you'll see I usually post in RESPONSE to FUD from Sunshiners like yourself. What's the matter, you don't want people to hear both sides of the story?
".....This is a losing argument, and anyone that has any level of logic should be able to see that...." Seems like the market disagrees, but then I suppose you don't want that mentioned either.
"....But instead, you say that Itanium is good because Sun is bad... Childish logic..." Actually, you guys are always first to post the Sun whitewash and your level of childishness is both extreme and amusing. I will try to explain how us users in the real world make purchasing decisions for high-end UNIX kit, as I think will help you understand why us users get annoyed by your Sunshiner posts.
Your complete argument is that any choice should ALWAYS go on Solaris on SPARC, without any further thought, simply becasue you say it is better than sliced bread. This is simply incompetent - the prime reason we want a platform choice is because it offers chances to reduce costs both in the immediate purchase and ongoing operational costs. A rule of thumb is that a system will costs four to five times as much in opex over its lifecycle as the immediate purchase price, so a wrong choice can be very expensive. Especially if that system is running a service your busimess depends on, in which case a wrong decision cold mean your business fails too.
We invite the vendors to help us with formulating propoals for new projects so as to both garner discounts and get the best possible projections. Yes, this means we talk to IBM, Sun and hp. We ALWAYS warn vendors we are not interested in hearing FUD about the other vendors, just info about their own kit. We have been burned in the past by vendor FUD dragging out purchases, which is why we insist on try-before-you-buy shootouts - nothing proves a system like running real data through it in your own environment. It is my experience that Sun are the worst culprits for continually trying to FUD competitors. I don't pretend my expereince is a complete marekt view, but it's what I see. Which is why I post counters to your online FUD - I suspect you are doing it not out of the customer's interests but your own, and there is nothing you want less than for them to get a real view.
"The article's about Unisys and Itanium, why is Matt talking about Sun?...." Because, as with any article that mentions Itanium, the same Sunshiner trolls immediately start posting FUD. Whay are you guys so fixated with bashing Itanium and hp? Oh, I forgot - your jobs are on the line what with Integrity eating up Sun's high-end marketshare, because everyone knows that's where the money is for contractors and admins too. In the webfarm niche Sun is stuck in the money is poor and the jobs go to PFYs straight out of college, not old Slowairs hackers.
RE: Helping Matt Understand
And there goes the Sun salesguide again. Honestly, David, if customers don't believe that schpiel when Sun salesgrunts are throwing it at them, do you really think anyone is going to believe it when you post it here? It's a forum - try posting an opinioned argument and not just regurgitating Sun material.
RE: Funny
"Let's see how long people stay at HP. Maybe the brightest will get asylum at Sun...." Hmmmm, I wonder if those figures were from before the recent Sun job-cuts. I hear hp employees in the past have made pay sacrifices to avoid job reductions, looks like they're more loyal than Sun employees. And why on earth would anyone want to go work for Sun? The company's financial position is so bad you'd get a pink slip five minutes after you walk in the door!
Anyone else think it's ironic that the Sunshiners are gloating at the idea of one Intel chip possibly taking share from another? See how far Sun have fallen - they somehow see it as good news that Itanium's only real competitors are Power and the next gen Xeons. They have forgotten the key fact - hp are number one in both Xeon and Itanium shipments, so either way is win-win for hp and more lose-lose for Sun. One of the reasons Unisys are in such a bad state is that vanilla x86 systems have scaled up and eaten a lot of their marketshare. A lot of that eating up has been by hp's ProLiant line, none of it has been by Sun's Galaxy. It's all so funny when you remember back to such sterling Sun statements as "Solaris on SPARC and nothing else!" Schwartz was wrong then and he's still wrong now, and it all means more humblepie in store for the Sunshiners.
RE: Tukzilla
Ah, the Sunshiners are out early, I see, along with the fake Matt Bryant login.
"Niagara and Rock are worldbeaters..." in the over-priced and incapable chip segment. So niche they make Itanium look mainstream - oh, hold on a sec, Itanium is. Especially in the lucrative UNIX high-end where Niagara can't play and Rock will never get to play, Sun have given up that for the SPARC64 chips they used to FUD so much, and their customers are so unimpressed they're shifting to hp Integrity as shown by the marketshare figures. Dream on, Sunshiners.
"....and hp supports Solaris on ProLiant with no Transitive needed...." Yes, and Sun makes zero revenue from any ProLiant running Slowaris, and no revenue from using IBM's Transitive. Not that there are many, indeed Sun's own Galaxy sales show Sun's own customers prefer their x86 with Linux by a ratio of five-to-one, even when Sun give Slowaris away for free. You see the customers prefer a real Linux like Red Hat to a poor Linux clone like Slowaris x86 and its tiny application base.
".... With Itanium dead and H-SUX, well... sucking... " Would that be the hp-ux and Itanium team that are trouncing Sun in the high-end? Face it, Sun would just love that kind of "sucking", they might even be able to make a profit from it despite Ponytail.
"....HP has hedged their bet and should be safe with Solaris on Proliant....." Well, more likely they'll be safe with their number one server vendor, number one disk storage vendor, number one software vendor and number one print vendor positions. Sun is number one in only one area - losing money. What you need to realise is that Sun is making no money from Slowaris x86 or Open Slowaris and still losing money overall, so they won't be able to innovate anything new in Slowaris to try and keep it anywhere even close to Linux or hp-ux or Windows or AIX. Do tell where you think the money is going to come from, because the analysts all think Sun is currently junk stock.
".... No need for Unisys - they don't even show up on Gartner's Magic Quadrant...." Because they are just about bust. In fact, Ponytail should dredge up some capital and try and buy them seeing as they actually make far better x86 kit than the uninnovative, me-too Galaxy kit. But then Ponytail has his heart set on the cloud, so making intelligent hardware purchases takes second place to buying up software companies he hasn't got the time or money to integrate into a viable stack. Even if Southern Asset Management let him stay around long enough, he'll run out of cash and have to break Sun up long before his cloud "strategy" can get to the point it makes a profit. Better learn some Linux, Sunshiners, it's your only chance.
RE: re: Tukzilla
"Well, it seems that only HP is making money from Itanium... " Looking at their annual report the answer is a very obvious "yes", and they look like they'll keep on making money on Itanium long after Sun have killed Rock.
"....But have they really? Has HP made their money back from the $5 Billion infusion from 2006?...." Try using some maths, check the annual reports, add up the totals including the money hp make from support and servcies from all those Integrity sales eating up the Sun base, and you'll see a profit. Oh, hold on a sec, don't use that Sunshiner maths you use for "benchmarking", otherwise you'll be out be a factor of aout ten.
"....I doubt it....." I doubt you have the first clue about what you're trying to FUD, but carry on 'cos it is very amusing.
"....Intel does not break out Itanic from their other profitable chips, so it's impossible to know whether Intel is making money on Itanic...." No, but hp do, and they alone make Intel and hp a profit on Itanium, so any bonus from other Itanium players is still more money than Sun have made from vapourware Rock, micro-niche Niagara and Open Slowaris.
".....From the less than enthusiastic comments made by Intel execs such as the most common comment that Itanic has "... not met expectations" I would say that Intel would drop Itanic in a heart beat if HP was not pumping money into it...." Yeah, a Sunshiner would advise dropping the chip currently mopping up business in the high-end UNIX space, where all the money is, but then Sunshienrs aren't very good at commercial decisions. It's so hard to relate to the real world from those ivory towers, which is why Sun customers are dropping Sun from their business critical high-end UNIX space - if you don't trust a company you don't run their kit for the jobs your company depends on to survive.
"....Times running out for Itanic." Looking at Sun's market cap compared to hp's, and the trend in the market figures for the UNIX high-end, it looks more like time is running out for you Sunshiners. What snakeoil will you hype when Sun is gone?
RE: re: I forgot to mention
What I think Kain Preacher is implying is that it is somehow fitting that Sun's HQ should be the site of an old loonybin. This is of course both low and insulting to the previous incumbents, comparing their unfortunate mental illnesses to Ponytail's self-inflicted incompetence and lack of vision.
"...The British constitution is "unwritten", but we had a written bill of rights, perhaps the very first, called the Magna Carta. This is now completely ignored." Apocalypse Later has repeated a myth. The Magna Carta has repeatedly been dressed up as some bill of rights for commoners, but it really was a tool for the fuedal lords to impose their will on the then King of England, King John, to little benefit for the common peasant. Whilst a lot of English law has come out of it, it was never intended to give rights to the peasants as the lords were dependant on keeping the peasants as poor farmers on the lords' rented land.
Remember, this is the good ol' US of A, and it all comes down to the picture the prosecutor can paint for the jury, whom are usually not computer or legal experts.
Case before - "We think the accused has downloaded porn on this laptop."
At this point the jury just think he's an unsavoury geek, but he has rights. After all, he could just have accidentally downloaded it or looked once out of stupid curiosity.
Case after first statement admitting downloading - "The accused has admitted to federal agents that he downloaded porn and viewed it on this laptop."
The jury probably think he still has rights, why decrypt the laptop?
Case now that he has refused to decrypt the drive - "The accused has admitted to federal agents that he downloaded porn and viewed it on this laptop. He obviously intended to view this material repeatedly as he saved the material, and obviously knew what he was doing was illegal and immoral as he has encrypted the drive to stop further evidence of his wrongdoing being presented in court. Without unencrypting the drive it is hard to judge the scale of the accused's crime and just how many children have been the victims of the accused's unsavoury and illegal sexual tastes. It could be that the accused has encrypted the drive to hide evidence of his having taken part in sexual acts with underage children, probably against their will. Unfortunately, the accused is more concerned with protecting his liberty than helping federal agents with tracking down the people that abuse these children for profit."
Now the jury think the accused is a monster that is just itching to kidnap, abuse and do God knows what to their own children, and he's using the Constitution to hide behind and protect his nasty, deviant buddies. At this point they're just about ready to lynch him.
After all, the reason they probably nabbed him was due to peeking at his ISP records, they can probably already see exactly which sites and even which pics he downloaded, whom he paid for his kiddie porn, and whom he messaged about it. What they're after now is the longest conviction they can get out of it, so the creep is probably making things worse for himself by NOT decrypting the drive.
Don't worry, take my word there are plenty of complete nonces with good IT knowledge who still think their work PC is "their PC" and install all types of insecure applications on them, and still think their IT department telling them not to is a PITA. My fave was the security insultant who brought a laptop onsite with a freeware FTP server installed, which just happened to include a rather nasty worm.
Or are they the same Sunshiner? Anyway, on with the fun!
RE: @ Matt Bryant - Quit your jibber jabber fool !
"If Mr T. read the reg I think he would post "Quit your jibber jabber fool !"...." I'm not surprised to find that your basis for a technical argument is a fictional aggressive character with limited intersocial skills. Oh, wait a sec - what technical argument? At this point I've given up even trying to look surprised by you Sunshiners.
"....As you clearly stated your views are based in the past and you have no intentions for forming clear unbiased views, your current views are based on your poorly understood out of date marketing rubbish...." As you clearly failed to read, we don't just take any company's word, we make them go to shootouts with real data in our environment. Which means I regularly get to see the best Sun can provide against the best from hp and IBM. In the last five years Sun has not one a single shootout, not even close. Which means I probably have a better view than the majority of the frothing Sunshiners that post here. In those five years of comparative benching, despite our request that the companies just provide info on their own products and despite their expansive promises, it is always the Sun representatives that are guilty of continually FUDing. I have posted this in my previous posts, but I assume you were too busy ranting to read it.
"....Your posts have become boring as its the same old tripe for anything to do with Sun...." I'll tell you what - you Sunshiners stop posting FUD and I won't feel the need to expose you for the liars you are. You can live on in your little bubble of denial without tainting the rest of the IT world with your FUD, and the rest of us can get on with watching the slow-motion carwreck that is Sun. Winners all round!
"....I use different systems myself and your posts are turning me more anti HP....." Strange how you feel so driven to defend Sun then..... I assume you use "different systems" because Sun couldn't meet your requirements either?
"....The loan rantings of a desperate person telling everyone they are wrong and he is right is sad....." Hey, they're not on loan, I give 'em away for free. If you feel the need to pay for them - Sunshiners seem to think it's right that you have to pay dearly at some point - then please go to www.linux.org and click on the "more" link in the "Make a donation" section. Whilst you're there, I suggest you also have a look at http://www.linux.org/lessons/beginner/index.html to prepare you for when that pink slip arrives.
/Sides starting to ache from all the laughing!
OK, disclaimer time for the incredibly obtuse Sunshiners - try and read and comprehend this time, dweebs.
I do not work for hp, IBM, Dell or any other vendor.
I am not paid by hp, IBM, Dell or any other vendor.
I do not work for a reseller.
I do not work for a marketing company.
I am not a bitter ex-Sun, ex-FSC or related company employee.
I have never applied for a job with and have never been rejected for a job with Sun, FSC or any related company.
You all need to learn Linux - fast!
RE: Jake
I'm predicting hordes of frothing Sunshiner mobs with, torches and pitchforks, converging on Bryant Street right about now...... I often wonder what the origin of the Slowaris tag is, someone told me it came out of IBM marketing back in the day. I'd be interested if anyone knows for sure.
Agreed, a lot of what we used to run on UNIX of one flavour or another has moved to Linux, some to Windows, but there are still the core bizz crit bits the board will only run on tried-and-tested UNIX stacks like hp-ux on Integrity. Given time and resources, I'd say we could replace 99% of everything with Linux, but I just don't see it happening. Looking back, the big surprise is how much Windows has actually penetrated our datacenters, particularly with MS SQL replacing a lot of departmental Oracle on UNIX. Ten or so years ago I would have predicted the Linux invasion but not so much of the Windows, we had a rule of "no Windows in the datacenter" then. BSD, especially FreeBSD, did have a look in but was lost in the enthusiasm for Linux, especially Red Hat. And despite the best efforts of our semi-tamed Penguinistas, it looks like Windows is pretty secure on the desktop, despite the regular virus scares and expense.
RE: RE: Late Nineties and SunCluster
Ah, Sun PDB for OPS, I remember it well. Especially the crashes, the network panics, and the finger-pointing exercises between Oracle, Sun and EMC. Yes, Early ServiceGuard wasn't perfect and had its bugs, but it was like an oasis of calm compared to Sun's dismal efforts. Sorry, but the idea of comparing PBD or even SPARC Cluster 2 to even the early versions of ServiceGuard is likely to induce fits of manical laughter amongst those of us that suffered that Sun product. I still remember how the hp salesgrunts used to salivate whenever we said a new project had a clsutering requirement, as they knew ServiceGuard would put them in pole position competing against Slowaris.
RE: @Matt Bryant by AC SUnshiner Number 1
"...HP won't port their own OS to their own server range which must mean that they know it isn't up to the job compared to Linux, Solaris, Windows etc...." So I assume you'll be pointing the same argument at IBM's AIX and z/OS then? Probably not. I'll make it really easy for you to understand - hp-ux has been developed for the datacenter, it is the high-end OS of choice because it does those business critical jobs really well, and whilst Windows and Linux have come on a long way (especailly on hp servers), they still don' match hp-ux. The market figures say it clearly, hp-ux is taking marketshare from Slowaris in the high-end, which is the most lucrative part of the business. Hp already dominate the Wintel/Lintel market with ProLiant, they don't need to port hp-ux to x64. Sun had to port Slowaris to x64 seeing as SPARC has been such a development fiasco.
"....Sun's Project Copy Linux - oh you mean DTrace, ZFS, etc that's right Matt, they were all copies of stuff done by Linux first....." Well, ZFS is a copy of ONTAP, not done by Linux but still a copy. And the much hyped dtrace is just Sun finally catching up in one area with the tools hp-ux has had for years. In the rest of the management game Slowaris is still years behind. And in trying to follow in Red Hat's footsteps Sun is a decade behind, especially in areas like drivers.
"......Have HP copied ZFS into HP-UX yet - no and they won't either because HP-UX isn't going anywhere...." As I have explained to Sunshiners in numerous posts before, hp-ux doesn't need ZFS, they have a better relationship with Veritas than Sun and real storage technologies. As Linus Torvalds said, ONTAP is much more interesting anyway. Whilst SUnshiners like to drivel on about ZFS, it has won Sun nothing other than a courtcase with NetApp.
".... Itanium is a niche and there is no getting away from it...." Lol, do you mean that nice, profit-making niche of the high-end UNIX space? The one Sun is losing share in hand over fist? Nice niche, much more proiftable than Niagara's webserving niche. Mind you, hp-ux has no counter to the Slowaris vapourware niche King that is Rock.
"....Matt, your whole "Slowaris" thing is really pathetic. Are you actually capable of formulating an argument without abusing things?...." Much as I enjoy using the Slowaris label, I have to admit it is not of my own making. You see, it comes out of years of poor Solaris on SPARC performance and appeared in the industry years ago. I'm not sure when I first heard it but it was quite common here in the UK by 1998. Much as you may like to pretend otherwise, I am not the only dissatisfied former Sun customer out here, there's plenty of us.
"......You are the El Reg equivalent of the playground "my Dad's bigger than your Dad"." And you're just another Sunshiner desperately trying to ignore the writing on the wall. Maybe you'll get it when it's on a pink slip with your name on it.
RE: AIX, Linux, and Windows
"Who needs Solaris and HP-UX anyway...." Well, it looks like all those companies running business critical applications still need UNIX seeing as the recent figures show the last quarter was the first in a long time that UNIX sales came in higher than Windows. And the UNIX of choice for those business critical roles is hp-ux on Integrity, as shown by hp's gains in the high-end market. However, Slowaris has slumped in the high-end so your query would seem to be right about Sun's UNIX.
RE: No Use for A Name
"somebody should have read the latest icd report before writing this article: "Sun was the only top 5 server vendor to experience positive x86 server revenue growth in the quarter – growing factory revenue 21.3% – and gaining x86 market share in the process."...." Sun grew its tiny x64 share from miniscule to just really small. Meanwhile, hp and IBM made much more impressive sales figures, still lead in market share by large margins, and made profits, something Sun hasn't done for years. I also notice you forgot to mention that the largest growth area, blades, is still completely owned by hp with over 50% share.
"....also last time I looked hp-ux wasn't exactly the cradle of innovation, much less creating any developer excitement....." You obviously haven't looked for a while (if ever). I can't speak for developers but there seem to be a lot of CEOs happy to buy hp-ux for the lucrative high-end roles, much more than Slowaris.
RE: @Matt Bryant by AC Sunshiner Number 2
"....Which is pretty amazing considering that none of the Itanium systems selling today are chip upgradable to Tukwilla if it ships/when it slips later on this year. Or are HP quietly not telling their customers about that?...." Old news, the current Superdome for example has had the same frame developed over almost ten years, so it's time for a switch. Still, it's more consistent than Sun which can't even tell you about the next generation after SPARC64 VII (that's if Fujitsu decide to make it), T2+ (who knows what that will need, or if Sun will have the money to develop it), or the follow on to Rock (beyond vapourware seeing as Sun can't even tell us about the future for the planned Rock boxes). For years hp has given customers in-box upgrades, but now is the time for a switch to take advantage of the new QPI.
"....That's because it's going to take that long for hp-ux to catch up with the rest of the industry....." A simple lie to expose - if hp-ux was behind the industry it wouldn't be the leading OS in the UNIX high-end, where the customer demands for performance, reliability and features are at their most. By the way, did I say that's exactly the area Sun is losing most? Looks like Slowaris is the one with the catching up to do. In answer to the rest of your vacuous schpiel I suggest you actually look at hp-ux 11i v3 as you'd see (i) the Base OE is free with Integrity (ii) the LVM filesystem has proven far superior to anything from Sun in real world use, especially its tight integration with ServiceGuard, the UNIX clustering tool of choice that appeared four years before Sun brought out their unstable and feature-lacking clustering (iii) hp-ux can be completely managed from a browser, including the creation of filesystems and clusters, which gives the lie to your lie of "having to hack" anything. Ease of management for hp-ux is one of the reasons we have replaced all our business critical SPARC kit with hp-ux on Integrity, we just don't need to spend as much time firefighting and messing around on the CLI as we did with Slowaris. What edge apps we do have left on Slowaris are all planned for migration to Linux, and on proLiant and xSeries, definately not Galaxy.
/still pointing and laughing!
That would be the area with all the high-margin services and support, then, the real money-makers? IBM's very lucratibe mainframe bizz is built completely on that "niche high-end", a fact a mainframe bunny like TPM should know. But maybe TPM should also know that hp's Integrity range scales from two-way blades to Superdome, and all segments are selling well even if Integrity is most dominant in the high-end. Sun's big problem is it is losing share in that high-margin high-end and so not making the profits it needs to. In fact, Sun can't make a profit.
TPM also forgot to mention that as well as hp-ux and Windows you can buy fully-supported Linux and OpenVMS on hp Integrity, whereas ProLiant is just Windows, Linux and now Slowaris, so Integrity actually runs more fully-supported OSs than Nehalem ProLiants will. Even though I enjoy windng up the VMS dinosaurs we have here, I'd be the first to admit OpenVMS is still a very popular OS amongst financial instituitons, with more of a future than Slowaris on SPARC. Both hp-ux and OpenVMS have much longer public roadmaps than Slowaris. In fact, hp-ux's public roadmap goes further into the future than Slowaris, Windows or AIX, and the reason is because customer demand is still very strong.
Sun's decline is partly poor strategy but more poorly performing products - they lost to Linux because Slowaris on SPARC was just that - slow! Customers could switch to Linux on cheaper x86 and get better performance for the majority of the webserving that was the core of the SPARC business in the dotcom bubble days. Hp had always aimed higher with hp-ux. In the late '90s, whilst Sun was making most SPARC sales from one-socket and two-socket webservers, hp's bestseller was the four-way and six-way K-class hp9000 servers, and these were primarily used for Oracle and like databases. A simple example of this difference in approach is that Sun's Slowaris Cluster didn't arrive until 2000, years after hp's ServiceGuard had been accepted in the market. Whilst ServiceGuard became a key technology for hp in the corporate datacenter, Sun Cluster was derided as a toy and Sun was reliant on Veritas clustering technologies when fighting hp-ux in those high-end, business-critical deals.
Whilst webserving was an easy target for Linux, replacing database clusters has proved a tougher proposition. IBM and hp saw this and allied with Linux to attack the easy target of Sun's webserving base. Sun went on the defensive, allienated the Linux community, and has suffered ever since.
Because hp-ux has always had scaling and performance advantages over ProLiant, hp has wisely not tried to play it against Linux but as complementary offerings - Windows and/or Linux at the front, and hp-ux doing the heavy lifting in the back. Hp has made money from both whilst Sun has lost marketshare with Slowaris, and Sun failed in repeated schizo attempts to woo and then attack the Linux community. Hence Sun's desperate attempt to fight Linux with Slowaris x86, which is very obviously failing. Sun's own Galaxy customers prefer to order Linux on Galaxy at a rate of five-to-one over Slowaris x86. Schwartz is happy to bleat about the millions of free downloads of Slowaris x86 but hates to admit the numbers of downloads that convert into support contracts as they number in only the thousands. And the servcies pull through is simply non-existant.
Sun's Project Copy Linux has failed, and now Schwartz is just looking for a means to keep the core software business going by outsourcing his server hardware business. Hp will be happy to mop up more SPARC customers as they have already gained many without Sun's help, so Schwartz is finally being realistic and not trying to swim against the tide. Sun's desperation to sign up hp to resell Slowaris x86 has been obvious from the Carly days, so you can rest assured that hp negotiated from a position of strength. I'm wondering if Hurd made Schwartz crawl around on the floor and bark like a dog before signing.
On a final note, TPM also needs to read up on his blades history, seeing as the hp blades range have always been just that, hp products, and not Compaq orphans. Yes, Compaq was the dominant racked x86 server vendor, but it is now hp that are the dominant blades vendor. I can't believe there's enough keeping TPM from doing proper research now that The UNIX Guardian has popped its clogs.
Oh, and the jetboots!
Still, very impressive, and a boon to squaddies having to walk long distances with heavy loads in places like Afghanistan. I'm assuming Lewis will soon be moaning about the UK equivalent, built at sixteen times the unit cost by some BAe subcompany?
.....but another point is that IBM used to make hp look like a minnow. It is hp that has grown though the '90s and dotcom bang to rival IBM. IBM has shed jobs and low-margin product ranges to concentrate on services, whilst hp has grown the traditional products and innovated in new low-margin products and services, and still managed to make a good profit in the areas IBM has chosen to ignore. Once hp was the David to IBM's Golaith, now it's more like two Goliaths with the IBM Goliath prefering to avoid many confrontations in order to survive. Both are shaping up to tough times in the downturn, andt it looks like the two titans will both be fine through the lean period.
An even more interesting conjecture would be that Sun is in a similar position as IBM was when it nearly went bust in the '90s, just on a smaller scale. Sun will have to make deep job cuts and dump unprofitable hardware busnesses to survive at all. It will be interesting to see if Schwartz can read the lessons of IBM's past or if it is already too late to avoid the sunset.
Whilst I wish them luck, for EV and/or leccy van sales to take off to the point where the scale means subsidies are unneccessary would need a national recharging point scheme. The Government needs draft legislation and to cough up for such a scheme on a scale much larger than £30m, and I can't see the petrol distributors like BP, Shell and Esso volunteering to commit suicide by putting charging points on every petrol station forecourt, especially the motorway services that the van drivers will need covered. Anything less leaves EVs as just town centre toys, which means they will never gain those economies of scale required to escape subsidies.
What tech advancements? The original had all the required effects just fine, thanks. Maybe it's a five-hour-long Bollywood coproduction with singing and dancing digital aliens. Hollywood needs to produce new stuff, not continually rehash the old, otherwise the decline in cinema ticket sales will just continue.
PS: And I can't think of any current Hollywood actress that could get even close to Sharon Stone as she was then! Right off the top of the phwoar-scale!!!
"....This is an OEM deal and therefore generates a revenue for Sun which wasn't previously there - albeit probably a small one in reality. Eg in future you should be able to order your Proliant with Solaris pre-installed rather than doing it yourself...." Hit the nail on the head there, Andy, but missed a key fact. Yes, hp picks up the hardware sale, the integration services, and support contract, but ALSO keeps the customer locked up and well away from Sun. Ponytail gets a tiny OEM licence trickle. I bet the boys at Red Hat are laughing themselves sick at the Sunshiners now.
RE: Dave Halko
Dave, that rushing sound you here is all those Sun customers rushing to get off SPARC and onto a viable platform in the shape of hp ProLiant. Just think about it for a second - Ponytail will make peanuts off the licence revenue whilst hp will cash in on hardware, support and services, especially when migrating all those EDS Sun customers to hp kit. But even then, Slowairs x86 will still be fifth in line at hp, where hp-ux and Windows will still be the primary OSs, Linux and OpenVMS will follow close behind, and Slowairs will lag by about ten years. Why ten years? Because that's about the position Linux was in with hp then that Slowairs is in now, and since then a lot of time and money has gone into testing and development to make Linux a tried and proven proposition across the whole hp range. Slowaris has just started, so even if hp can be bothered to put any effort in, it will still be years behind where Linux companies such as Red Hat and Novell stand on ProLiant.
RE: Ahhh, there it is....
".... and the migration from HP-UX to the Open Standard Solaris on X64 has begun....." Ah, Bill, if only you had a clue. This is start of the migration of all those EDS customers using Slowaris off SPARC onto HP ProLiant. Seeing as EDS is Sun's largest partner, that means an even bigger hole in the Sun figures which a tiny bit of licence revenue will not replace. Ponytail has made the best he can out of the inevitable defections, but Sun's financial position just got even worse.
"....Just one more nail in the coffin that is Itanium....." And as I pointed out in the last thread, you Sunshiners just can't resist FUDing Itanium for any reason. What you should realise is this is the end of the Galaxy team - who is going to want a poor copy of a real x64 range when they can have the market-leading x64 server range, associated management software, proven and integrated storage, and all from one vendor with one support contract? I sense a big stack of pink slips going through the Sun mail system to the Galaxy boys right now. But it doesn't just stop there - Sun's server business was relying on Galaxy to prop up the disasters of niche Niagara, niche Rock (should it ever arrive) and the only real chips in Fujitsu's SPARC64. Without a reason to buy Galaxy, why will Sun customers bother looking at the rest of the Sun range? And without the Galaxy money, how will Sun keep Rock on course? Face it, the SPARC termination announcement has just been made, Niagara will be dead in two or more years, and Rock just got aborted. Sun has just become a software only business.
RE: HP-UX
"You guys are assholes..." Once again the same tasteless idiocy from the fake Matt Bryant. Strange that he always folows Bill and has the same poor level of eleoquence and technical knowledge.... Anyway, everyone knows the correct spelling for us Brits use when describing such people as Bill is "arsehole". Maybe when Sun's server bizz is gone his next Mcjob won't have internet access to allow him to post such drivel.
"NetApp is positioning themselves well for possibly sourcing hardware (and software) from SUN, if their legal case goes badly....." Dave, I thougt you Sunsiners had already assured us NetApp didn't have a chance against The Divine Right Of Sun? And how you make this bizarre speculation from the article is beyond any form of logic. PCIe is a standard so if NetApp needed to source any hardware from anyone (and why they should you don't say) they could source it from any server vendor, so why choose the dying minnow of Sun? Anyway, didn't you hear the announcement about hp ProLiant support - Sun have just outsourced their server business.
As for the bit about NetApp stopping development to take a step back to use the Sun copy ZFS, I can only conclude you are posting from a cocaine factory whilst not wearing a dust mask. Sun have admitted they based ZFS on ONTAP, which means NetApp were already ahead of Sun in development and have probably developed further since. Why on Earth would they want to go backwards? Oh, I forgot - that kind of thing happens a lot in the Sunshiner fabtasy world.
Looks like a winner for those remote office setups. Up to four powerful servers in one chassis, powerful enough to run local email and database, possibly other servers virtualised, inside 2U. Should make an interesting option to having to put in a half-loaded blades chassis or several 1U rack servers.
Have to correct one misconception on blades switches, though. They can replace external rack switches as they have external ports available for other non-blade devices, or the blade chassis can use pass-through modules to connect to existing rack switches. So the idea that blades somehow ties you to having to have rack and blade switches is incorrect.
.... is the reduction in the number of estate agents removing themselves from the genepool by wrapping their Porsches around trees. As with the last downturn, most of these equivcators-of-the-turth have been forced to hand back their leased flashmobiles and trundle around in much safer diesel Golfs or A3s, unfortuanely allowing them the chance of breeding with some equally befuddled member fo the opposite sex.
FreeTard Posted Friday 20th February 2009 09:20 GMT
"....but there hasn't been a proper handling Merkin car ever, apart from very expensive ones that is..." Ever heard of the original Ford Mustang? It was quite popular over here in Europe due to it being relatively cheap, reliable, and a cruiser that could also handle very well for its day. For a more modern example, you may want to consider that both the BMW Z3 and Z4 are from the US design arms of BMW.
".... None of their "trucks" (4x4's) go offroad without falling off....." You seem to have forgotten that the original Willys Jeep was an American product and much, much better than anything produced by Europe for many yearrs after. The more recent Jeeps are also very capable, with the Wrangler still being one of the few vehicles I would consider taking seriously off-road rather than my default choice of a good Landie V8. In fact, outside of Landrover, it is very hard to find any European 4x4 which is not really a soft-roader at best.
The sheer size of the US market allowed US car manufacturers for years to develop cars only for that market. Cheaper, smaller and more efficient imports from Japan changed that, not European cars. What has happened in Europe for many years has been a gradual upcreep in the size and weight of our designs to an almost common global size. The recent economic impact is pushing us to smaller and more efficient cars but the same is happening across the Atlantic. I wouldn't write off the US car industry just yet.
Whilst bashing Merkins seems to keep a large chunk of the UK populance feeling smugly superior, you may also want to stop and consider that the PC you're tryping on and the OS it is running are almost certainly products using technologies developed by Merkin companies. Ditto your fridge, microwave, TV....
"....I think that HP will slowly die on the high end. IBM will overtake HP in servers again. And who knows what Sun will do, but my guess is that they will continue to be the best Unix." Whilst an epitome of lucidity compared to Bill's dribbling, would you care to supply any reasoning to support your ideas? With IBM gradually abandoning the low-end x64 to Lenovo, I predict it will be very hard for IBM to match hp's unit figures. And as for Slowaris being the best Unix, whlst you are entitled to your opinion, it is not shared by people like Gartner, whose Magic Quadrants rate hp-ux higher than Slowaris or AIX.
"....You are the one that is always spouting the fact that Sun has no benchmarks and then when everyone, not just me, quotes them to you, you ignore them...." Nope, I said show me these wonder benchmarks you keep going on about, and you couldn't provide industry standard ones like TPC or SPEC without admitting the Sun performance was pants, you just kept pulling out the Sun sales guide and pushing Sun's "compatitive benchmarks". When I quote real benchamrk figure done in shoot-outs you just flip out.
"....The fact is that IBM comes out on top on Oracle because of the licensing issue, Sun comes out on top for everything else, and HP never comes out on top except in some very specific microbenchmarks...." Well, seeing as hp Integrity is the king in the high-end, it would seem those "very specific microbenchmarks" happen to coincide very neatly with what real corporate customers think they need for business critical applications. Come on, at least try and see past your own FUD and admit that if hp-ux is king in high-end UNIX then it has to be by customer choice, which means hp are doing something better than Sun or IBM. Go on, just try.
"...Sun scales from low-end to high-end..." Sun scales very expensively in a disjointed fashion across several incompatible server ranges with different binaries from an over-priced low-end to an unwanted high-end. Sun's only hope is getting other vendors to support Slowaris on x64 kit.
"....while IBM and HP have chosen to only concentrate on the high-end....." IBM and hp have true scale, in hp's case from the rx2660 right up to Superdome, and with Integrity blades in the most popular blades chassis on the market. Or did you forget again that hp is the number one server vendor? No, I'm sure you didn't forget, you just don't want anyone else to remember.
"....This makes HP way too expensive to even consider...." Proof positive you don't work in the industry, otherwise you'd realise the high-end is one of the most cost-competitive arenas around. Sure, the pull-through of services and support are bigger, but costs are a major issue, and if hp-ux was so expensive as you insist then it simply wouldn't be number one. But it is, so obviously you're just talking more male bovine manure. Face it, when Tukzila arrives it's going to be running the number one UNIX from the number one server vendor.
"....Even HP has given up on advancing this incompetent OS and are trying with all their might to push everyone to Linux...." Strange then it's the number one UNIX in the high-end. I guess all those highly-paid CTOs and CIOs are just to stupid to ask for a roadmap or any commitments from hp? Yeah, right! There is a public roadmap for hp-ux with plenty of development targets listed, and hp are making a profit from hp-ux, unlike Sun which are still making a loss on Slowaris. Sun are so desperate they're trying to give Slowaris away for free in order to get some support contracts, but it's not working. But becasue hp-ux is still valued by users, especially in the high-end, hp is still making plenty of money from support and licences. You really should try researching a bit more before going on your bitter little FUD trips. It is so obvious you just can't stand the fact hp is making a profit from Itanium and hp-ux, and Sun just can't make a profit fullstop.
"....You are an oaf and a liar sir." Prove me a liar then. Oh, you can't. In fact, all you've proven is that Sunshiner FUD is still a tragic comedy. So why don't you crawl back to Guillemont Park and hide under your desk until it's all over and Sun is broken up and sold off, then go get yourself a McJob you're more suited to.
"....correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the RAF flying Harriers on combat missions in Afghanistan? If they want them replaced, the only other plane they've got is the ground-support Tornado...." Actually, the ground forces in Afghanistan seem to prefer the Longbow Apaches, but then that might be because they're flown by Army pilots rather than the Brylcream Boys.
"....Tornado which is a: crap, and b: has a turning circle slightly larger than a mountain pass...." The Tornado GR4 is not crap, otherwise it wouldn't keep winning NATO bombing exercises. And with its swing wing it can actually manouvere very well at all speeds. It is also still one of the fastest jets in the World at low level and can carry a heavier weapons load than the GR7 Harrier over a longer range. Now you've been corrected you may go stand in the dunce corner.
Whilst the Tranche 3 Eurofighter looks impressive, I still think we could cut our order in half and equip the rest of the RAF with something like the BAE Hawk 200 light fighter, which would seem more than adequate for most of the UN "policing" actions we seem to be getting involved in and save us a shedload of money.
In the meantime, the Conservatives may not give two hoots about Scottish shipyards but they do care about defence, especially as the Falklands War occured on their watch. When the Tories get in you may see a shifting of some of the work Southwards to help bolster Tory fortunes in places like Portsmouth.
What stopped the Sea Harrier from doing SRL was that our carriers were too small - we would have to clear the whole flight deck for every landing, whereas with VL we could just plonk the Harrier down in the same amount of space as a helicopter. So, seeing as our new gen carriers (if they ever reach service) will have decks with enough space for the F-35B to do SRL, it seems obvious that the Sea Harriers could also do SRLs with full weapons load. Seems to me we should just keep the Sea Harriers until the carriers get upgraded with catapaults and arrestor gear and can launch the proper naval version, the F-35C.
Couldn't agree more. Once had a Pug 205GTI - lovely when it worked but that wasn't often, and the problems were usually the electrics. A friend had an even worse time with a Citroen that used to lose hydraulics regularly, usually at speed on the motorway so the first thing you knew about it was when you braked and nothing happened. Most annoyingly, the Citroen had an equally unreliable bit of electrickery that was supposed to tell you when the hydraulics had done a Weygand, only that never worked either. Having recently suffered the appalling build quality and awful design of a brand new Citroen Vias courtesy of Hertz there is no way I would ever want a French car again. Let the Germans build the things, let Michelin stick to tyres (my pref is Pirelli anyway, and not just becasue of the calendar).
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