[geeks] PS/3's, Linux, etc, was: Second Life is not a game?

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Wed, Aug 01, 2007 at 08:02:15AM +0100, Mike Meredith wrote:
> Because it's faster :-
> 
> http://dl.alphaworks.ibm.com/technologies/cellsw/cellFMwhitepaper.pdf
> 
> Of course this only works for those who write their own code, but some
> people do.

Yes, they do. :-)

 
> If you've laid down a big chunk of cash on a large box to run
> computational tasks on, buying a PS3 for the associated developers
> makes a lot of sense.

I don't understand (yes I'm being exceptionally thick here), if it
is just computational tasks, besides (not) being big endian what is the
difference between a PC running 64 bit Linux and a PS/3?

I'm not talking about a $200 supermarket PC, I'm talking about high-end
hardware with 4 core processors, lots of RAM, etc. Not off the shelf
in most places, but still easily available.

I'm purposely ignoring the fact that PS/3's are toys in most of the
world and taxed accordingly. 

I know with the demise of the Alpha, there is little or no high end
hardware that is little endian, but shouldn't a properly written
program not care?

To me there are lots of advantages to buying PC's instead of any
proprietaty hardware include availabilty of parts, expandability,
and the fact that in a year when they are obsolete, I can give
them to secretaries, etc. :-)

That's also why I always advise people NOT to run Linux on non-PC
hardware. To me the differences between a SUN or SGI or VAX running
Linux is so small that a cheap PC running Linux can do the same
work for a lot less and it has the same "look and feel".

If you want to run different hardware that supports different operating
systems, IMHO  you should run that operating system and keep the
differences.

Obviously there are exceptions, such as scaling beyond PC's, the
lack of availabilty or licenses for old operating systems and
the need to run modern software on old hardware. 

> Look, go and have a look at their list of customers. Does that seem
> like a company having trouble making ends meet ? They may be lying of
> course, but for the purposes of this discussion we can assume they're
> telling the truth.

I'm not saying they are lying, I'm just saying that buying one boxed
set, or joining their network, makes you a customer. I downloaded their
system and ran it, but never paid them, does that make me a customer?

I used to subscribe to their mailing lists, and contributed often.
The definitive postings on implementing CUPS on their systems, which
I still get occasional emails about (from people doing it on other
Linux distros),came from me.

I stopped contributing to them when they dropped the lists and went to
web forums. I'm an email kind of guy, not a web forum user. Because I
stopped reading the emails, they dropped off of my radar so to speak,
and stopped using their products. 

Now I just use Ubuntu for my PPC linux needs, but to be honest, most of it is 
done on PPC Macs using BSD.

I don't know how it works in big companies, in the startups I've worked
for (and ran) that used Linux, we bought a copy of the software we ran,
if it could be, although it could be legally download and re-distributed
for free. But we only bought one copy. 

If for example, Large Aircraft Company, Inc. has 10,000 systems running
a particular Linux distribution, did they buy 10,000 copies from the
vendor if they did not have to? More likley they bought one and placed
it on a local server and let it be downloaded by anyone in the company
who wanted or needed it.

10 years ago I worked at a Univeristy that had embraced one of the
X86 BSD systems that was so popular at the time. They had paid
$100 for a "site license" which allowed them to distribute as
many copies as they wanted either on CD or via the network.

Shortly after I left, they replaced all of those systems with Linux,
and operated a local Linux mirror. While you could buy a box from
the U.S. of the distribution, complete with support, no one
did. 

The original ISO images were downloaded (they had one of the few high
speed Internet lines at the time) and support was provided by newsgroups
and mailing lists. I can safely say that while there were thousands of
systems that started life either from CD's or downloads off of that
mirror, not one cent went to the "vendor".

I may be wrong, but having been burned, I am never going to invest
large amounts of my time or money in anything that is GPL'ed.

I don't think the money is there. Don't get me wrong, I am looking
to include GPL'ed software in my next venture (if it ever happens),
and will fully honor the GPL both in practice and intent*, but I
won't spend money to develop things under it. 

Geoff.

* I don't believe in a dual GPL/closed license. If someone contributes
  fixes or enhancments to GPL'ed code, I believe they have the right
  to see that code stay GPL'ed and not sold for use in closed source
  products. I also can not see that there really could be a seperation
  by the vendor. 

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838 
Visit my 'blog at http://geoffstechno.livejournal.com/