[geeks] [rescue] Ultra 5 OS

[gsm at mendelson.com]

On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 09:47:00PM -0400, Patrick Finnegan wrote:
>On Tuesday 27 April 2010, gsm at mendelson.com wrote:
>> Mendelson's law (number 1): Microcomputer people consider it their
>>  g-d given right to make the same mistakes that mainframe people did
>>  30 years earlier.
>
>Such as?

I assume you are joking.

>Virtualization?  VM/370, predated by CP/67, predated by a development
package for the 360/40.

>Channels? (Fiberchannel, Infiniband)

Early 1950's Invented by RCA. There is a funny story about visitors from
the Soviet Union, RCA's BIZMAC (with channels) and the UofP professor
Saul Gorin, which predates the cold war.

>OSes with unaffordable maintenance contracts you legally have to
>purchase? (Oracle Solaris)

Affordable is a matter of point of view. 10%=20% of the lease cost is not
unreasonable if you are a company making a money off of the use of the
hardware/software, but it makes it impossible for hobbyist.

However the bottom line is that Oracle is in business to make money, and if
they don't charge, they will end up like SUN. 

>Scaring people into not trying to use the first-sale doctrine with
>software they paid for? (virtually all proprietary software)

Yes, even SunOS had the "right to use" issue. If you sold your Sun computer
you could not sell the RTU license and the buyer had to buy a new one.
This is one reason why a used Sun Pizza box might cost several thousand
dollars from a retailer, while you could get one for free from people
for the cost of a pizza. (and usually a new NVRAM).



>Oh, maybe you mean Open Source software.  Yeah, true, IBM is really
>screwing the pooch by adopting that one... ??  At least for those who
>are uncomfortable with not paying money for software, companies like
>RedHat and Novell/SuSE have managed to productize it. (also Apple with
>Darwin/OS X)

Look at my previous posting. VM/SP was a combination of open source
mods, proprietary code and a free OS. Circa 1977.

Geoff.
-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
New word I coined 12/13/09, "Sub-Wikipedia" adj, describing knowledge or
understanding, as in he has a sub-wikipedia understanding of the situation. 
i.e possessing less facts or information than can be found in the Wikipedia.