[rescue] [geeks] Last Call - Ultra 5/10 parts

[Mouse]

> The list was built on the "rescue" conceit.  The idea that we could
> take dumpstered systems and make them useful again is pretty empty in
> 2014.

It is?  I do it regularly.  I snag machines on their way out and put
them to work doing useful things.  I just recently set one up as a VPN
endpoint at work.

> The Oracle deal has killed patch availability, killed opensolaris,
> and slowly strangled the hobbyist scene.

Only for Suns.

Admittedly, that's a substantial loss, though more so for many of you
than for me.  Patch availability is irrelevant if you don't care about
the OS being patched (which I don't, Solaris and all other
closed-source OSes).  The major thing Oracle killed that I personally
care about was the chance of getting hardware documentation for things
like the cg14's DMA engine or the SUNW,rtvc.

> At this point we are all historians.  There's no "rescue" for SPARCs,
> only roles in zoo exhibits.

Oh?  So the uses I'm making of my SPARCs don't count, or what?  (My
routine screens-and-keyboards, at home and at one of my workplaces, are
SS20s with cg14s and type-3 keyboards.)

> That's OK with me, I guess.  I'm glad we persist.

So am I, mostly.  But, sometimes, I feel as though I should just walk
out on the ice floe; the world no longer wants people like me.

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