[Info-vax] OT: IBM Offering $9-10 Per Share for Sun

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <grc9pa$saq$00$1 at news.t-online.com>,
	Michael Kraemer <M.Kraemer at gsi.de> writes:
> JF Mezei schrieb:
> 
>> 
>> They are not concerned about performance. If you have plant machinery
>> designed to produce 1 tonne of paper per hour, you can't just push a
>> button to make those machines go faster, so in the end you don't need a
>> faster computer to control those machines. So having your VAX box moved
>> to an emulated 8086 gives you compatibility with your older system
>> without any software worries and with mor readily available spare parts.
> 
> Which is kind of a strange argument.
> The main issue here is reliability, not speed.
> Those emulators most probably run on top
> of some Linux or (gulp) Windoze OS.
> Now we are told here over and over again
> how crap these platforms are,

And like sheep, you just take that at face value.

> crashing all the time and needing xx patches
> per month etc etc.

Depending on the applications running, most neither crash or need to
be patched all the time.  And in the case of patches, a serious IT
infrastructure has that well in hand.  I do it for two locations, one
fairly small and the other consisting of what is probably the largest
IT Enterprise in the western hemisphere, if not the world.  Both of
them do just fine and can trace the majority of failures to user actions
in particular refusal of users to obey procedures.

> How can such unreliable platforms host VAX/VMS ?

Because this supposed unreliability is a figment of your imagination.

> They would need to be at least as reliable as VAX/VMS
> to be worth hosting it.

And they are.

> And if they are just as reliable, why not just skip VMS
> and proceed with Linux/Windoze instead ?

For the same reason why Linux and Windows are flourishing while VMS is
languishing.  "It's the applications!!"  There are applications, particularly
homegrown stuff, that runs on VMS and so the IT shop has to stay with VMS.
Sadly (for VMS) more and more of these shops are, in fact, porting their
applications off VMS.  So, it looks like the end result is going to be
exactly what youe said above.  They are going to "just skip VMS and
proceed with Linux/Windoze instead".

bill
 

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>