11 Jun
2009
11 Jun
'09
12:20 p.m.
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Liam Proven wrote:
2009/6/10 Dave McGuire <mcguire at
neurotica.com>:
I'm a part of that generation. Windows 3.0 was released (1990-05-22) a
mere 4 days after I was born.
I guess I am lucky; I was introduced to computers when I was 4; I know
of the exotics, those that rivaled the PC, and those that came before.
VAXen and PDP-11s, Alphas, MIPS boxen, beige toasters (of both the 68k
and PowerPC variety), Acorn units, SPARCstations and the like.
I know of their software. I might not have used all of it, but I've tried.
VMS, TOPS-20, UNIX (of many flavours, most available with sprinkle-on
X11 toppings), CP/M, DOS (and it's various flavours), that awful,
graphical pane-glass DOS multitasker and it's New Trashology variant,
OS/2, classic Mac OS, and probably more.
On Jun 10, 2009, at 2:25 PM, Zane H. Healy
wrote:
Same here, but I don't
really consider them to be "technical
people". Being that I don't use (or work on) Windows machines, I
tend not to work with those people professionally, and I
certainly don't associate with them on a social level...they give
me that "not so fresh" feeling. ;)
-Dave
-- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL
I reckon Zane is bang on the nail, actually.
*Most* "techies" now know nothing except the x86-32 PC and Windows.
DOS is a forgotten mystery; Windows 9x is historical and unknown.
PCs have always been 32-bit and the 64-bit transition scares them.
They have never seen or used any networking protocol other than
TCP/IP (and that is a mystery except to specialists). They don't
know how to use the command prompt and increasingly they have never
used floppy disks.
>>
The other amusing thing about which people here (at
>> least) should know better is the visibility factor. VMS,
>> OS/400, MVS, and VM are *everywhere*...but people think
>> they're somehow "dead" because the only thing they see in
>> for sale in WalMart is PCs running Windows. Do these
>> people really believe PCs running Windows process their
>> bank transactions, maintain hospital databases, or run
>> railroads?
> I agree with this statement, and out side of this audience
> how many people even know anything besides Windows exists?
> There are a lot of people that think all computers run
> Windows.
Of course this isn't the only group of technical people. The
disturbing thing is, there are a sizable group of "technical"
people who thing Windows is all there is, and either don't
realize anything else exists, or that anything else still
exists. These are the people that really scare me. And yet, these are the "technical experts"
who are building the
systems upon which we all rely.
Scary, isn't it?
These people think it's efficient to run a copy of
Windows 2003 on
a server (which needs a couple of gig of RAM to work well) and then
run multiple VMs on that containing copies of Windows 2003 or other
flavours of Windows. They think virtualisation is new and clever
and it doesn't occur to them that not only is this wasteful of
resources, but it's a nightmare to keep all those copies patched
and current.
"couple of gigs"? When I think of servers, that's what I think for
"required storage". 512MB of RAM should be enough for *everybody*,
including servers.
Ok, 1GB RAM for those servers that host multi-luser make-believe games.
They think that encapsulating SCSI over TCP/IP is an
efficient way
to connect servers to disk farms.
They think that a full-screen GUI session at 1024x768 in 16,385
colours, carried over 100Mbit Ethernet, is an efficient way to
remote-control a server. They can just about stand to use such a
session carried over an 8Mbit ADSL connection, but they'll whinge
about it.
16,384 colours. Just fixin' the typo :)
And acutally, I think if you want to run something GUI over the
network, do it the X11 way. Instead of compositing the image and then
sending a full image off, send off the operations to composite the
image and composite it locally, e.g. send things like "draw line from
(a, b) to (x, y)" over the wire, not a picture of a line :)
And these people build the systems that keep us alive
in hospital,
that contain and manage our money and taxes, that schedule and
control our planes and trains.
I find it terrifying, myself.
Acutally, the NYSE runs on Linux servers.
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