Posts by Matt Bryant

Re: Wrong school tie

As was pointed out higher in the thread, the majority of civil servants are not paid even competitive salaries, so the idea that HMRC is packed out with ex-Etonites all looking to scratch the backs of their pals in the City is simply too stupid for words. All the ex-Etonites are working elsewhere for far better wages.

Re: Dan 55 Re: JavaScript?

"For the love of God, JavaScript is not Java." Duh! JavaScript has plenty of security holes of its own. It is the clueless that insist "JavaScript is not Java" that propagate the falsehood that JavaScript is safe simply because it is not Java.

Re: Right we get the point but

"Wouldn't he be doing better to try and foster some kind of 'bring your data home' initiative to keep it onshore instead?" Well, yes and no. Yes, it should be more secure, but no because it will be more expensive. Outsourcing to India is cheaper, hence the popularity for companies trying to cut costs, but then the cost of bribing someone in the outsourced company to subvert security is also cheaper. The simplest way to break any security system is to get someone on the inside to break it open for you. Training the locals in advanced security will simply make them better at subverting any additional security. Companies can live with that if they simply don't care about the penalties, so we would see a lot more reversed outsourcing deals if the UK enacted some serious penalties (financial and jail-time for CEO/CIOs) for security breaches of outsourced data.

Re: AC Re: Alpha....

"Same single-platform story applied to Alpha....Alpha also had multiple licenced sources....." Neatly ignoring two simple facts - the size of the Alpha market was already smaller than the Itanium one, and it was far simpler to port all those Alpha OSs to Itanium than port hp-ux (bigger market than OpenVMS and Tru64 combined) to Alpha, because Itanium was designed to be a porting platform. The first fact convinced Compaq to switch from Alpha to Itanium, and the second convinced hp it was the right decision.

"....Why are you even trying to argue that technology killed Alpha when it's perfectly obvious that corporat politics did?...." Sorry, but market facts killed Alpha in favour of Itanium. The decision to kill off Alpha was actually made by Compaq before they were bought by hp because switching to Itanium made more sense. Deny that all you like, you'll just be wrong again.

Re: Peter Gathercole BeFuddled

"....... but the Chinese have taken up the MIPS architecture with their Godson CPUs." The Godson chip is aimed at Xeon, not Itanium. It also seems that Huawei and Inspur both looked at Godson and chose Itanium instead, so if Godson now falters and dies as a commercial enterprise CPU it will be another scalp claimed by Itanium.

Re: fork23 Re: Prior knowledge

"....and IBM really tried hard to embrace Itanium....." The really fun bit about IBM's Itanium "support" was how hard they tried NOT to sell it! Their salesgrunts never offered the X450 series Itanium servers, they had to be badgered into selling you one. IBM's standard sales patter was to ignore the customer's requirements and suggest a mainframe, if that failed suggest an Power-based AIX server, and if that failed then offer a Xeon server. Then just keep dropping the prices on those three until the customer bit or the opposing vendor pulled out of the deal. But IBM still managed to sell over 10,000 X450 series servers to IBM customers that found the Itanium server was a better solution to their requirements than mainframe, Power-AIX or Xeon, despite IBM trying their best to convince them otherwise.

Re: Re Alli Spin

"......curious if there will ever be a 22nm chip...." So are we. There were hints coming out of Intel that the Tri-gate process was making deadlines tough to meet, so I suspect Intel simply took the easy route for a quick upgrade they could pin on the roadmap. As it is, we're just getting Poulson systems now, and they do provide a nice performance jump over Tukzilla, so another jump in two or so years will be welcome. The fun is what happens after that, which I suppose will have to wait for another NDA session with hp and/or Intel, probably when they know in a year or so's time.

Re: Ill-educated Mike Peter Gathercole BeFuddled

"All I can tell you is what I was told. They were referred to as Superdomes by the salesmen. As I don't care what a server is called, but what it does, I took them at their word. If you look up the rx9610 servers you've referred to, you will note they are described as being 'Superdome like' and 'call board based like Superdomes' etc....." Wriggle, wriggle, wriggle! The hp term "Superdome" wasn't used until long after the rx9610 had been released, you're just desperately looking at the hp Retired Products list and trying to paper over the immense gaps in your knowledge.

"....When HP later came back with Superdomes containing Itanium 2's, we also looked at performance and whilst significantly better than the first offering, it still sucked compared to the competing chips....." Yeah, was that "look" just as much fantasy as your Superdome rx9610? LOL! Credibility zero!

"......MIPS was not killed off for one simple reason that may have escaped your attention. It still exists. Different role maybe....." More wriggle, wriggle, wriggle. Being an embedded chip in a washing machine is not pass for being an enterprise solution, though it's probably as close as you've ever been to enterprise computing.

".....I really do wish The Register would add an icon not just for 'fail', but 'epic fail' or 'tripe' as it would more accurately represent your reply quality....." Hey, ask nicely and maybe they'll open a junior forum for you and your kindergarten buddies.

"...... Name one chip that was actually killed off by Itanium as per your previous comments....." I already showed how MIPS was replaced by SGI by Itanium, you're just too sulky to admit it. Now go take your afternoon nap, you're just getting a little tetchy.

"......Rock wasn't. That was killed by Suns incompetence...." Their incompetence in dropping the port of Slowaris to Itanium you mean, leaving them no alternative but to go begging to Fujitsu for SPARC64, a chip they spent years slagging off? Truly classic times, still makes me smile thinking about it.

Enjoy!

/SP&L

Re: Re: Ill-educated Mike Peter Gathercole BeFuddled

".....I spoke with many a HP salesman from their BCS group at the time and investigated buying a Superdome...." Gosh, I'd believe you, only anyone who did actually enquire about Superdome would know they didn't come with the first generation Itanium, Merced, they either came with PA8600 or later PA-RISC CPUs or Itanium 2 CPUs. The "development" systems hp largely gave away were the rx9610 IIRC.

".....Your comment is absolute tripe....." I would suggest it is more a case of you simply not knowing what you're talking about, again. Yet again.

".....You're just picking on any chip that didn't make it through that time and claiming Itanium killed it off!!...." SGI actually bought the MIPS design and formed a compnay called MIPS Technologies, just so they were assured of the longterm longevity of their systems. IIRC they did so for eighteen to twenty years. They expressly ended their MIPS range to build Itanium servers:

http://www.osnews.com/story/15741/SGI_To_Drop_MIPS_Irix_Moves_to_Itanium_Linux/

Evidently the news didn't reach the troll kindergarten. Yet again.

I would suggest that you take time to learn something before your next foray, such as maybe spending a few years actually working in the industry.

Re: Ill-educated Mike Re: On the plus side

".....as Intel seem to have confirmed Itanium is dead......" Once again, learn to read, it will prepare you better for these forums.

Re: Ill-educated Mike Re: Peter Gathercole BeFuddled

".....If you say so. Personally, I don't know how it went......" Why would anyone expect you to know?

"....as HP are having to pay Intel to keep the chip going....." HP are paying a fab partner, just like other companies pay fab companies to make chips for them. An example is Apple who don't make any of their own chips.

".....I guess Intel are happy with the arrangement. Not sure HP are as much though....." Seeing as both are making a profit out of it they're probably both quite happy.

"....You're claiming that HP were selling a development version of the chip?....." Yes. That's exactly how hp sold it, so that early adopters could start on software. Some companies actually bought the first gen servers and used them in production anyway as they had the best floating integer performance going at the time, but otherwise they were slower than the PA-RISC chips of the day. HP sold the Merced boxes cheap to get ISVs on board so they could brag about 1500 Itanium-ready applications come the Itanium2 launch.

"....In general, the only chips it killed off were their own!!....." Apart from Rock, the last and stillborn UltraSPARC variant, did news reach the troll kindergarten of a range of chips called MIPS?

Re: Prior knowledge

"....the demise of Itanium...." See, once again you are confusing reality with your spoonfed fantasies. The announcement is of a slip, not a cancellation. Go get yourself signed up for remedial reading, you're embarrassing the rest of the trolls.

".....Good job he didn't take my bet....." If I wanted a sure bet it would be on you exposing your stupidity with every post you make.

Re: Ill-educated Mike Re: Alpha....

"Sorry Matt, but I couldn't help but respond....." What, you spotted another thread where you think you can roll with the trolls? What a surprise - not!

"....Perhaps you could enlighten us with how many of those operating systems are left with?....." Apart from hp-ux and OpenVMS? Well, there's the question of what Huawei are going to run on their Itanium servers, but it's probably going to be a Red Flag Asianux Server variant, which already supports Itanium: http://www.redflag-linux.com/en/product_end.php?class1=10&class2=1&productid=1

And whilst you state no RHEL or Windows support, I can still run the supported versions. Should I get bored, I can even load up a fully-supported latest version of Debian: http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/6.0.6/ia64/iso-cd/

Or even Gentoo: http://distfiles.gentoo.org/releases/ia64/autobuilds/current-iso/

Oh dear, it looks like your eagerness to be "one of the gang" has led you into another arena you know SFA about. Now be a good trainee troll and go get your diaper changed, it's almost as full of the brown stuff as teh rest of you.

Re: Itanium dead, huzzah!

Are you posting from the Home For Burnt-Out IBM Matkeing Drones? Specifically from the ward dealing with those that fell victim to serious heroin abuse?

Re: looking from performance and TCO perspective...

"I'm wondering who wants to run Oracle on Itanium with ridiculous license core factor of 1.0?....." Probably the people that bought IBM Power and didn't realise Turbo mode meant paying for Oracle licences for all those cores switched off, i.e. a core factor of 2!

".....Is there any benchmark on the planet where itanium is faster or equal to POWER or x86?" Obviously the ones where hp managed to sell all those Itanium servers. Duh!

Re Alli Re: Spin

"....Shocking that intel will not simply move the poulson chip onto 22nm and put a larger cache on it....." It would have been that simple a few years ago with the old process, but now Intel has invested in the new 3D Tri-gate process, and it appears that shrinking Itanium down and introducing the new process in one step has proved too much.

Re: Paul Turner 1 Re: On the plus side

".....The court case is only almost over....." No, it's over, all that needs to be settled is how much Larry has to pay for his massive FUD exercise. The final phase of the trial is equivalent to sentencing, Oracle's "guilt" has already been decided.

".....I'm sure that it is no coincidence that Intel waited until the appeal was denied before dropping this little bombshell....." As bombshells go, it's hardly major. Intel have not cancelled Itanium, as Oracle insisted they were going to, and have mentioned further development, which Oracle claimed would never happen. IBM's Power roadmap has slipped and dropped features plenty of times. Sun's old SPARC gag had more feature drops and slips than Power's and Itanium's combined, including the hilariously drawn out death of "Rock". I suppose the old Sunshiners just want any "good news" to save them from their misery, and the IBM fanbois tired of waiting for IBM's assurance that Power is the Only True Faith to come true.

Re: Peter Gathercole Re: BeFuddled

Close but no cigar.

"....They approached HP with an offer to take on the development of the EPIC processor ...." Hp developed the first Merced generation of Itanium. They realised early on in development that the platform was great for porting, and decided that if they could persuade other partners to pick it up then they could maximise their return on investment, so they approached Intel (not the other way round).

".....When it came to producing the processor that they promised to HP, Intel were a bit tardy...." The delays in getting the first Itanium design out, Merced, a development version, was an hp issue, not an Intel one. Intel then took on the major role in developing Itanium2.

"......So Intel benefited greatly with their own processors, and HP suffered....." Hmmmm, hp gained a production and development partner with massive scale, they gained a chip that allowed them to continue making enterprise UNIX servers, plus easily migrate Compaq's old enterprise customers, plus it killed off many of their competitors. Yeah, disaster - NOT!

Re: Alpha....

Why? Alpha was just a RISC design like PA-RISC and was hitting the end of the RISC development capability. It even had less of a market than PA-RISC. Itanium was designed from the ground up as a porting platform and offered far greater development than Alpha, and allowed hp to use one platform for multiple enterprise OSs (OpenVMS, Linux, Windows and hp-ux). Oh, sorry - did I expect you to understand an argument based on facts and logic?

Re: There Is Still Hope

"......They did the reverse with the original Itanics: Give it the hardware to decode x86 instructions natively and make the transition from x86 to Itanic easier....." That was because the original Itaniums were not intended to use x86 code much, so they put a whole Pentium3 on the die for the expected odd bit of x86 code. This did run x86 code, which was what was originally promised, just not as fast as a Xeon, unsurprisingly. Of course, the IBM and Sun FUD machines went into overdrive insisting that hp and Intel had claimed the Itanium would run x86 code as fast as a Xeon, an outright lie repeated endlessly by the trolls. In later developments it was found the emulators on Itanium could run x86 code better than the on-die Pentium3' so the die space was used for different enhancements.

Re: On the plus side

"I guess we can expect Larry to be in a great humour....." Really? His last round of singing is due to land him with a $500m bill, and then he has to keep funding development of all his software on Itanium for hp's benefit until hp does finally call it a day. If Larry is singing it will be through gritted teeth.

Re: Spin

No need to cue the IBM trolls, they live here as TPM's pro-IBM articles give them hope.

Re: Spin

".....HP is basically saying Kittson doesn't exist, we are going to goose Poulson a bit in the 32nm process and just call it Kittson....." No, that is what TPM is saying. You obviously missed the bit about "future development", which implies a further development of Itanium. Of course, having to accept that would malke the IBM trolls' heads explode.

Re: Ill-educated Mike AC Ill-educated Mike AC Destroyed All Braincell's rant

".....Massively distributed computing is the norm... and it is a massive failure....." You speak so much contradictory rubbish it's like someone wrote a program to generate stupidity. Companies, especially large corporations, do not invest in failures, they invest in systems that they believe, after careful analysis, give them the best business performance for the least cost. That is why mainframe is dying.

".....It is all server with a terminal.... some call it the "cloud" but it is just the centralized, mainframe-terminal architecture...." Rubbish. In the classic mainframe-terminal environment, all the processing and computation takes place on the mainframe and the terminal is just a data entry and direction device. With modern cloud the terminal also often does computational work - it might call on cloud applications for data or to calculations, but the core does not do all the work.

Re: AC AC Destroyed All Braincell's rant

"It is not as though the ISVs/OEMs don't want access to the mainframe...." Of course, it's the best scam going! Customers are locked in by the poor application choice and the cost of getting off the sinking ship. From the ISVs' viewpoint it's a great market as they can charge an arm and a leg and blame it all on IBM!

"....people would just use DB2...." So your point is DB2 was so crap that Oracle took all ther mainframe DB customers? LOL!

"....Totally the opposite on x86, anyone can do anything whenever they feel like it. If Oracle decides that they don't like the majority share hypervisor, they are free to undercut it. If VMware feels like testing Q-Logic, but not so much on Hitachi, who is to stop them...." What you are trying to knock is the effectiveness of an open market model. If say Hitachi come along with a good product then the customers put pressure on Microsoft to work with Hitachi or they will go to the OS vendor that does. In the mainframe case it is the opposite - if IBM don't like the product because it will reduce their revenues, despite the benefit to the customer (PSI and Hercules are great examples), then IBM simply kills the product. And you want to describe that as good!?!?!? I'm not surprised you are not in a position to dictate startegy or make purchasing decisions.

Re: AC AC Destroyed All Braincell's rant

"....If you look at the marketplace at the moment, you'll notice a fair chunk of people being willing to pay the extra money and tolerate the lack of choice for products that just work...." There are a fair number of companies still using Slowaris on SPARC because they are stuck on it. I even hear there are companies stuck with VAX systems for the same reason. You are simply confusing the result of bad previous business decisions with desireability.

".....End users are simply fed up with Windows failing all over the place...." Really? If that was true then Microsoft would have gone bust by now, instead of being the owner of teh most populous desktop, office application software, and server software. Stick to the little you know and leave real IT to the rest of us.

Re: Matt Bryant.

"....Obviously, you don't have any faith in your own comments!!...." As pointed out before, the really worrying thing is yo actually believe the male bovine manure you spout.

"....Exadata runs Oracle DB in just same way Integrity does...." <Sigh> Just exposing your lack of knowledge there again. Exadata is a carefully tuned stack of servers, storage and Oracle software. You could build a similar stack on Itanium using Oracle DB and hp Integrity but there are some software bits, mostly management, that are unique to the Exadata product. However, you can build a superior system if you use hp's Matrix product, especially as that allows you to build a solution that matches the individual company's requirement, around mixed environments of Linux, Windows and hp-ux, and using non-Oracle software and applications if required, and can be scaled up and down, compared to Oracle's one-size-fits-all and Oracle-software/hardware-only approach. I'd try and explain Matrix to you but I fear you are really just too obtuse to get it, and there are people at hp actually getting paid to sell it, so I suggest contacting them and seeing if they have the patience to deal with someone as "special" as you.

Re: Ill-educated Mike Re: AC AC Destroyed All Braincell's rant

"....That noise you're hearing is the sound of every IT professional laughing at you for such a silly comment....." Hey, I can't help it if you don't know how to test a patch release. Some of us can.

"....different hardware is better for different scenarios...." The only scenario mainframe is better is "we have a f*cking old mainframe app we can't port because all the developers of the ancient code died of old age and we haven't a clue how to get the data out of it". No other case for mainframe exists, period.

"....Sometimes x86 is cheaper...." The only time mainframe is cheaper is when the associated cost of getting off the old mainframe apps is too much or too risky. I have seen companies completely abandoning old apps and data just to get off mainframes, and data is the last thing you ever want to ditch.

Re: Re: Re Ill-educated Mike Ill-educated Mike pm

"Abuse as usual for no answer...." Plenty of answers, it just seems I need to try using very short and simple words for you to understand. It's gettign hard as I don't think The Reg will allow me to attach crayon diagrams, which seems about your intellectual level.

"....which at the time, I didn't know a lot about...." Going by your posts, not much seems to have changed there. It also explains why you know SFA about the Wintel/Lintel environment.

".....For many years, the primary development platform for Oracle has been Oracle Linux...." On hp Proliants, actually. Oracle try to hide the fact they didn't even move their labs over to Oracle x64 servers until people started realising how much hp kit they were still running. But please do try denying they still develop for Slowaris, it would be very funny to see what frothing claptrap you can come up with on that one!

"....Think you might find that agreements tend to have an end date...." In another amazing bit of Oracle contract ineptness (it was agreed in the days when Oracle viewed themselves as staying as just software) there was no end date to the co-operative agreement regarding version parity. But you didn't even know about that agreement, so I'm not surprised you didn't know anything about the terms. Fail!

Re: Ill-educated Mile IBM does have details about Power8 in its public roadmap....

"....I believe the phrase Oracle would use is 'engineered system', but then you'd know that if you spoke with them....." So now you want to argue whether Exadata is an appliance or not? You seriously are a few buns short of a bakery. Whatever, it looks like your life is really so trivial you would argue that water is not really wet, just overly damp. Just man up, admit you were wrong, the readers might think more of you for it. At this point it would be hard to see them thinking any less of you!

Re: AC Chet Mannly utter bollocks

".....you do realise that fish food is generally just ground up fish....." You obviously know as little about fish as you do everything else. Whilst the common types such as salmon are predatory, many others are herbivorous such as the Grass Carp grown for food in China. In the US the Grass Carp is even used for controlling the levels of river weeds.

"....about the same time I see cold fusion working." You never know, maybe they'll do something on Cartoon Network for you.

Re: Linking basic staples like corn to the oil price

"..... you didn't notice the price hike in veg oil a few years back....." Cough*catering packs*cough. 100 litres at a time. Much, much less than a pound a litre.

Re: Chicken or Egg?

".....Of course big oil & defense companies with their powerful lobbies have a massive vested interest....." Aw, you were doing so well up until the mask slipped and you trotted out the standard anarch-socialist claptrap. One of the reasons we're so lagging on electric cars is because Greentards such as yourself blindly objected to schemes such as nuclear power that could have provided the cheap and abundant electricity we need for them to work.

Re: AC Re: utter bollocks

".....my tried and tested system, which is to downvote any of Matt's posts without even reading it....." LOL, always warming to know I'm hitting the right buttons with The Faithful. Frankly, I have long thought it waaaaaay beyond the capabilities of many of the sheeple that bleat here to actually read and comprehend posts.

Re: AC Re: Chet Mannly utter bollocks

"....The price of vegetable oil is as it is because currently it is mostly only used in food production. The world currently consumes over 93 million barrels of oil per day. In western countries between 50 and 70% of this is used for personal transport. It doesn't take a genius to see that if everyone switches to running their vehicles on vegetable oil or vegetable derived ethanol then the prices of vegetable products (and consequently meat products) will increase markedly...." Your argument is one sided, you simply provide the figures for daily consumption of oil, then insist that it is impossible to meet through vegetable oils without providing any actual argument to support your insistence. You also do not provide a case for your rise in food prices, but the example of Brazil undermines your argument completely. And that's before we start looking at possible additional sources of food (fish farms, which do not need arable land) and vegetable oils (seaweed, ditto). You are obviously not the genius you mentioned.

Re: Linking basic staples like corn to the oil price

"...... It's just that corn and its various derivatives are totally inefficient......" Whilst vegetable oil is less efficient per litre/gallon than proper diesel, it makes up for it in cash savings here in the UK. Sorry if you are not UK based, but here the price of motor fuel is ridiculous due to a taxation mechanism that was supposed to drive down car sue age and hence pollution. In the UK over 60% of the price of a gallon of fuel is tax, which is why you will see British tourists in the States weeping when they see the prices there.

However, older diesel engines with pre-rail-injector designs can burn thicker veggie oil with very little or no modification very well. And an added bonus is your car actually smells like a chippie rather than a smog machine. Because the oil (usually corn oil) is not being taxed as fuel oil it is very, very cheap compared to diesel. Now, HMRC hate losing any money, so you are obliged to declare how much untaxed oil you are using as fuel and pay an excise duty on it, a process called "making an entry", but it still works out very cheap compared to diesel, even with the economy disadvantage of older diesel engines compared to more modern ones.

Indeed, in the UK the whole idea took off due to an artificial fuel shortage: http://www.sovereignty.org.uk/features/eco/biofuel.html

Re: AC Re: AC utter bollocks

"....But since you're so helpless, let me google that for you....." The problem is you Googled you just didn't bother READING the subject matter. The majority of those articles are about countries with existing political problems leading to lack of food or the food prices of staples being driven up, not one is about the impact of crop-based fuels. The one article you obviously didn't bother to read was the last, from the NZ Herald, which does have a passing comment on using all spare US wheat to feed the Third World rather than using 25% for ethanol, quote: "If all the food in the world were shared out evenly, there would be enough to go around....."

Further down this article is a very telling comment - "....if more African land was brought into production...." - revealing that the real issue is not the lack of arable land but the cr*p state of many Third World countries, their governments and their policies. I know the standard mantra for Greenpeckers faced with that truth is to blame it all on Western capitalism but that doesn't remove the fact we have EXCESS food in the West.

All you are doing is repeating the usual Greenpecker socialist shrieking and trying to apply it to a completely differernt scenario. Those countries would be knee-deep in the brown stuff whether we in teh West were using crops for biodiesel or burning kittens for heating. Go away and READ up on the subject.