[Info-vax] OT: Arun Kishan

[Neil Rieck]

On Jan 9, 7:51 pm, Neil Rieck <n.ri... at sympatico.ca> wrote:
>

[...snip...]

> Lots of people are still sending me emails bashing my Windows posts so
> let me set the record straight:
>
> 1) I love OpenVMS and consider it my favorite OS
>
> 2) Windows is not (yet) as stable as OpenVMS and is still vulnerable
> to many kinds of infections
>
> 3) After reading lots of books this year including "Showstopper! The
> Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at
> Microsoft" by G. Pascal Zachary I have come to the conclusion that
> someday soon (perhaps 5 years) Windows will be as stable as OpenVMS.
> Why? Because of the influence of the ex-DECies at Microsoft.
>
> 4) The ex-DECies at Microsoft have made Windows-NT (and 2000, XT,
> Vista, Win-7) more respectable. The code bases known as MS Chicago and
> Cairo have been totally replaced with ex-DECie code bases like
> Whistler etc. and it shows. Too bad MS stuck with the name "Windows"
> because everyone associates the new stuff with the old stuff.
>
> 5) I have done some fancy OpenVMS I/O programming where you set up
> conditions for communicating with the kernel and can tell you that
> this Microsoft video:
>
> http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Going+Deep/Arun-Kishan-Farewell-to-the...
>
> which indicated where Windows came from kernel-wise (Cutler and VMS)
> and where they are going (re: 256 core support) reminded me of the
> story of the "Tortoise and the Hare". We OpenVMS hares are satisfied
> to sleep with point releases of OpenVMS every 18 months while the
> Windows tortoises are catching up fast. The execs at HP see this too
> and are just biding their time while providing minimal life-support to
> OpenVMS. They make hardware which runs multiple operating systems so
> really don't give a damn.
>
> 6) Just as we have all seen with Solaris and OS-X when they've been
> installed on quality hardware, Windows will also run better. Sure
> there was the big fiasco a couple years back at the London Stock
> Exchange but sometime in the future someone is going to try a stunt
> like that again and it will work. When that happens programmers who
> can only write code for OpenVMS will be put out to pasture.
>
> Neil Rieck
> Kitchener / Waterloo / Cambridge,
> Ontario, Canada.http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/

One final thought. There is some evidence that humans left Africa
twice in the second half of the previous two interglacial periods when
food and water were in short supply. (Glacials usually last 100,000
years and are followed by interglacials which usually last 20,000).

What has this got to do with OpenVMS?

Most people in this newsgroup compare OpenVMS to Windows or *NIX but
conveniently forget about the evolution of the processor (s/w living
environment). Meanwhile, just like the story of the "Tortoise and the
Hare", the x86-64 architecture (under evolutionary pressure from
AMD64) as been catching up to, and may be very close to surpassing,
Itanium. Someday an Intel bean counter will kill Itanium at the stroke
of a pen which means that OpenVMS will not have anywhere to go.

HP management will reassure you by claiming that OpenVMS can run in a
virtualized mode hosted by HP-UX but does that OS run on x86-64?
Perhaps both OSs will need to run from PC emulators :-)

Alternatively, HP management could make use of the lower labor costs
at HP-India to quietly begin an OpenVMS port to x86-64.

Neil Rieck
Kitchener / Waterloo / Cambridge,
Ontario, Canada.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/