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Re: reading matter on Linux+Red Hat+Titanic+Billenium
I wonder why someone would think that the project that has involved the
wet simulation for 'Titanic' is the most 'public' appearance of an OS that
has been running major web sites, search engines, and even automobile
corporation's computer networks (Mercedes-Benz according to unofficial
rumors under German-speaking linuxers ?) for two or more years. Perhaps
the association with something that has sunk and killed thousands of
people made the subject palatable to those who let the article through.
The fact that they quote only Red Hat and Caldera as suppliers, when there
are 20 others, and do not mention the fact that some (such as Debian) are
on par with the commercial ones, but free, is a clear indirect statement
of position towards free software in general. They do mention that Red Hat
makes the sources available for free on the Internet, and that that
company has increased in circulation by 90% in 2 years, between their own
stock quotes, without evaluating or mentioning the value of that company.
There is no mention of an URL. They do mention that it is 300 MB in size,
however, and available on disk.
Luckily, most people can make it out themselves from there. The URLs for
three dozen stock quotes emphasizing the size and growth of said company,
most of the bibliography references (on the Billenium page), and other
interesting URLs, that quote the stock situation of the company who hosts
this page, peppered the page everywhere, so I had to jump hoops through
the crud to get at the text.
I was spared the corporate logos and associated artwork, as I used lynx
(text-only browser) on Linux to get at the page. Otherwise, perhaps the
calculated effect of a page generated mostly by professional marketing
psychologists and to a lesser extent by a not-so-well-informed writer
would have touched my inner child's left ankle, and god knows what would
have happened then. Maybe I'd have made another, better version of
Linux-lp. On a second thought, I *might* browse that page with a graphical
browser later...
As to the Billenium, it quotes a list of references, that refers to
solutions found by others that run exclusively on UNIX or have not been
implemented at all yet, with the sole exception of the ones quoted to be
done in-house, whose test-platform OS is not declared. Perhaps they were
tried out on MT, which claims to be UNIX soon by reaching POSIX compliance
real soon now [tm]. It has been claiming that for quite a while, so we all
got used to it. Do not get excited.
I especially liked the one that referred to a concurrent company not
wanting to do certain computations on another company's computers, while
another paragraph in the same text stated that the system would be secure,
and yet another that the setup will be automatic, such that one would have
no direct control over what the network or the machine (not even that
anymore - but we already have that, no ?) does, and does not. I suppose
that there has been a major breakthrough in logical speech, and I haven't
heard of it.
There was no mention about 'system administrators' or 'managers'. They did
say that they would have to plug the wires into the right color-coded
holes, and turn on the power switch. I suppose that corporate LAN
administration would be turned over to building janitors everywhere.
Perhaps an appropriate GUI system non-administration tool could simulate
faucets and boiler gauges on the screen to make things easier. Do you
remember the winter when your office building's janitor never got around
to fix that thermostat and you went to work to find your poor Asparagus
brittle with frost, like glass, near your desk, and blew vigorously into
your fists to get the blood circulating again, while shivering
uncontrollably for minutes on end ? And never mind that the hard disk
crashed minutes later, as the heating turned up to 'hotter than hell'
poured warm wet air onto its cold spinning disks, obliterating two months
of hard work.
Relax, if you're in Timbuktu and the LAN automatically decides that it's
time to play non-violent video games, as the intelligent user-management
system decides that you have over-worked yourself too much 30 minutes
before the meeting where either your presentation will succeed or your job
will end, then it's only 20,000 km to the nearest serviceman who has
signed an NDA, and can help you. Maybe. Hey, take it easy. And no, he does
not take Rupees. Only USD. So what if you have a PhD in CS and Physics ?
You did not sign an NDA. You should plug the cables firmly into the
color-coded connectors. No, sir, we cannot tell you why, it is a corporate
secret.
Anyway, it would be a nice experiment. I doubt, however, that the
technical data resulting from it, the numbers that say something beyond
red tape and PR, will ever reach anybody who is not tied down by a pile
of NDAs. So, for the remainder of the world that is not a corporate
insider, it is utterly useless, unlike most references that it quotes,
which are *in the public domain*, and are serious academic and practical
material, open for anyone to understand and use. And yes, they do mention
numbers, meaningful for anyone willing to go the same way or improve it.
Yet another incredible corporate amalgamation operation is under way...
As to just-in-time compilation, I have seen no mention of Java or Perl.
Both have been doing it just-in-time for about 3 years now (don't
quote me on the numbers), and were born on UNIX. Perhaps they have
censorship in-house and they don't let their own journalists read the
concurrence's PR releases. Anyway, I'm sure they read them in secret
somewhere. Maybe they have to hide in the loo to do that. Are loo ceiling
lights included in the Billenium automatization, and will they have Eyes ?
I sincerely hope, for the future customers of this project, that the five
Laws of Robotics will be firmly implemented. Literature abounds with
robots that do horrible things to their masters (and their enemies, and
friends, and innocent bystanders), even though most of them *have had* the
laws implemented. They almost invariably try to take over the world, or
break down.
Anyway, if they *would* implement them correctly, then the free software
community, and especially Linux, would have nothing to fear, as one law
states that a robot cannot hurt a human being. There is no ammendament to
this law for humans who happen to be friendly with penguins. One thing
that was good, was the fact that the project has arrived too late for
1984, when Orwell predicted it would happen. Was HAL an early stage of the
experiment ?
And wouldn't that 'auto-configuration' thing disobey one of the Robot's
Laws ? The one with 'you shall obey a human being' ? I mean, without
having to do CTRL-ALT-DEL.
Recommended newsgroup containing messages pertinent to the subject:
alt.bill-gates.kind.beneficient.loving.big-brother
aka "He's watching you", available on news2.new-york.net (and maybe
locally) for actcom.co.il users and on other good news-hosts near you [tm]
for others.
OTOH for a real-life implementation of a distributed system, that is
clearly UNIX although the implementation is original, check out the French
Coherent project (discontinued last year I think). There is an online
paper about it (whose URL slips my mind - I gave it once to Shlomo Shapiro
who is on this list, perhaps he will oblige) that describes kernel level
support for highly modularized distributed computing, in a UNIX-like
kernel and environment. And yes, it has a GUI. I suppose it's a flavor of
X11 under the circumstances. Anyway, there are serious production systems
running Coherent out there, and this is already getting old. Check out
newsgroups for 'coherent' (e.g.: comp.os.coherent). This is not a future
project, it is present.
And please, please, move stuff that has to do with PR off this list. If
you go on I will crack, unsubscribe here, and subscribe to
comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy in despair.
As always, any similarity, including parabolical, between anything and
anyone quoted here, and real reality, is coincidental. I ap.. app.. apo..
apologize (man, that was hard to say !) in advance for any offense
brought to (almost) any party that might feel concerned.
As to, whether some people on the list aggree or not, with what I am
writing, well, if you want no more of this, please advise, or do not start
in the first place. I find, that discussing the wrong company's policies
in this newsgroup just won't do in the long run. Let's talk about Red Hat
software packages, Slackware patches, and the next ILUG meeting, ok ?
still not hot enough to flame anybody,
Peter