Posts by Robert Halloran 89 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Aug 2008
Meanwhile, when Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed late in 2020 a month before *that* Presidential election, McConnell couldn't wait for the body to cool before announcing they'd push through Trump's nomination (Amy Coney Barrett) before The Other Party won and flipped the scales.
"Moscow Mitch" has since chosen to retire next year after seeing the unbridled shitshow his party has become under Drumpf part 2.
These days, piece-parting something together out of a bare CPU & discrete TTL logic is barely worth the effort other than showing off your soldering / breadboard skills. Back in The Day being able to get anything together that was functional was an achievement in itself.
That Woz can walk around with a Pi Zero in his pocket as a honeypot would have left him gobsmacked in those same halcyon days of hardware hacking. The fun these days is working out how best to leverage the cheap-as-chips (pun intended...) hardware now readily at hand...
I give Elmo credit for backing EVs, and setting up the Supercharger network so drivers are willing to take them on road trips.
That said the 'legacy' carmakers are catching up, with economies of scale he can't match, and the Asian companies like BYD, Vinfast, etc have a decided advantage in labor costs so he's riding on a rapidly declining image (given his recent actions the wags are labeling his vehicles as 'swastikars'). That ridiculous payout package he wanted from the Tesla shareholders was obviously his attempt to cash out before the bubble burst.
MS has tried other platforms before: remember NT was available on Alpha & Itanium before they threw it in and fell back to Intel/AMD. More recently their spectacular failure to promote their ARM-based Surface slabs. The 'long tail' of Windows apps that ran poorly if at all in emulation has pretty well put paid to that idea for the general market.
Now their Cunning Plan (apologies to Rowan Atkinson) is to get you to run everything in their cloud and just reach it from a thin client/browser on your tablet/handheld. That the majority of Azure VMs are in fact running on some Linux flavor is irrelevant as they're getting paid for the cycles regardless of what OS is burning through them.
If you look at the comments above, there's any number of users who've successfully told VMware/Broadcom to get stuffed and have moved to exactly the open-source-based systems you're pooh-poohing.
I'm sure there's some edge-case features in VMware that Proxmox/Nutanix/Red Hat aren't providing (yet...) but the extra business they're getting should let them build up to cover them. As it is it looks like the alternatives cover some large swath of those customers looking to jump ship.
This is the sort of response (the competition is Good Enough...) that should have the Broadcom suits in a collective coronary.
What *should* happen as small/medium operations take advantage of that is said competition expanding to cover the edge cases that are scaring off the bigger fish from following along: virtuous cycle?
VMWare has been the default virtualization system for years, but given Broadcom's efforts to squeeze their enterprise customers, the rise of multiple alternatives like Proxmox & Nutanix, the push for containerization and the move to external cloud hosting, Broadcom may be finding their move is driving off those major customers in job lots and warp speed.
There's not only shenanigans about applicants for H-1Bs, but since there's a requirement that companies post jobs domestically before resorting to offshore help, there's also a cottage industry to help Big Corp craft said job req's to preclude any US applicants from meeting the requirements, at which point the corp's are regretfully forced to go offshore for the talent.
Echo the previous comments about bringing in H-1Bs for entry-level helldesk & coding gigs which could be done by any recent graduates of high school/community college. But *those* folks want a working wage and could jump ship for better pay whenever it suits them.
Outside of the Boston-Washington DC corridor, the population density for effective passenger rail just isn't there in the US. The main cities along that route also have the local mass transit to move people
to/from the depot to their final destination. The comments above re: shifting mail traffic to air over rail definitely apply.
Cost for one-way is roughly $300/vehicle & $100/person for an 850 mi/1400 km run. Approx. travel time 17 hours with one train each northbound/southbound daily. No in-between stops.
Given the route parallels the I-95 corridor along the US east coast, and can be driven in a little under 12 hours, the demand is pretty specific for people out of the Bos-Wash megaplex headed to the FL theme parks and wanting to avoid dealing with traffic. As with passenger rail in general, the distances across the US and the availability of cheap airfare discourages usage (DC - Orlando airfares available for $120 one-way)
DC has two airports: Reagan National (formerly Washington Nat'l) just across the Potomac River from the District proper, which is restricted to shorter-haul flights, and Dulles 25 mi/40 km out into Virginia for long-haul/int'l flights. When I worked there late 70s the Metro did service National but the suburban rail line out into Virginia ended about 6 mi/10 km short of Dulles. This was seen by people as a Bad Plan as this made Dulles harder to get to/from, and the existing track was running down the road's median but ended short of the airport. I see they've finally corrected that so you can go all the way out.
>> The plans are for VirtualBox to replace VMWare in almost all my clients.
a) VirtualBox is meant as an end-user product b) Broadcom has announced the end-user products are being sold off to ??? c) Businesses using ESXi are generally looking at Proxmox or Nutanix as alternatives
Big corps are evaluating/going to Other Databases with friendlier terms, more than a few of their app suite projects have gone sideways (see other headlines on this site), their cloud business has come up day-late-$MONEY-short vs AWS/Azure/Google/etc, and their ongoing efforts to monetize Java have only accelerated adoption of OpenJDK and its derivatives. Their latest quarterly earnings came up short of market expectations as a result of all this so it seems their only option is squeezing the existing customer base for added licensing money?
Given the historical success of ITU "standards" in the past (X.400, X.500, the ISO protocol stack implementations) vs. the IETF counterparts (SMTP, LDAP, TCP/UDP/IP), I'd like to think there's little to worry about. Having worked some years in a Former US Telecom Monopoly firm, the mindset of "rough consensus & running code" is anathema to many gov-based entities.
>> One of the things that helped kill NIS+ (beyond the complexity) is the Sun Directory Server. Now some of that code lives on in the 389 Server project.
"Sun Directory Server" was rebranding of the Netscape Directory Server (written in part by Tim Howes who co-wrote the LDAP spec) they acquired when Sun & AOL jointly took down the Mighty Mozilla late 90s. When "iPlanet" broke up a few years after, AOL took their copy of said code and eventually released it to the world as the 389 Server.
Vanilla AT&T UNIX didn't include TCP/IP networking until late in the System V series after it merged in Sun's BSD-based code. It was a common add-on by third parties as a selling point.
If you look at source from the day, you'll see IfDefine statements for a shedload of *IX variants because there were that many versions with differing options based on what that build had/hadn't optioned in.
Wonder why Xinuos dropped their BSD-based update to SCO-the-undead's OpenServer; licensing problems after they resurrected their parent's lawsuit?
I've debated a plug-in as the next vehicle buy, but all the ones I've seen to date seem to give you around 30 miles/50 km on the battery before you're back on the ICE; helps the fuel economy numbers but doesn't seem all that compelling. May as well make the fuel tank a bit bigger and be done with it.
The two items that seem to be on potential buyers' minds here in the States are how far you can go on a charge (the specs here line up well with what's already available) and how quickly you can recharge (there's a big push for DC fast chargers to be set up at least along the major roadways to get you back on the road ASAP); nothing in the PR here about compatibility. Most of the newer EVs coming out for the US market are touting charge-up to the nominal 80% in the 15-20 minute timeframe via DCFC, which on a road trip gives you time to visit the facilities, grab some snacks for the next leg then be on your way. In practice most driving will happen locally and you'll charge up at home off the mains, but that occasional long haul is a show-stopper to many potential buyers.
>> Numerous times a consultant has come in with grandiose plans and lots of bells && whistles - which culminated in their receiving a senior (aka high paying) position in said company.
Saw this more than once; they come in as a senior exec, get their plans started with great announcements of good things Coming Real Soon, then get out before the issues start to show up and the Grand Plan runs into reality and craters.
They notch another firm on their CV, and move on to some other firm; lather rinse repeat...
>> In the US there should be a delay, as people would still be voting on the west coast as the first results come in from earlier time zones.
Typically the initial results start coming in shortly after the polls close in a given state (optically scanned ballots allow for quick reporting of what was on the paper), This may have some marginal influence on voters further west where polls may still be open, but hasn't proven to be a game-changer in any elections I'm aware of.
[ There was a bit of a fuss a few years back when the pundits started reporting on Florida just after the polls closed in *most* of the state, which straddles Eastern & Central timezones, and the western panhandle region was still open. ]
The US Constitution leaves management of elections to the states; the state legislative houses draw up the district boundaries based on the decennial census, typically to the advantage of the majority party at the time. Some states have been dragged into court for blatant gerrymandering to maximize their party's representation across those districts, with mixed results. In some states, the problems left behind by racial discrimination mean the boundaries must be vetted by the Feds to ensure minorities have a fair shake at the polls.
If you look back, there was a case brought by Red Hat against SCOX effectively for libeling their software business as being tainted (Lanham Act), which got frozen when bankruptcy was declared. With the settlement, which apparently explicitly leaves out Red Hat as a participant, I wonder if there's a chance of restarting that case and clawing some of those millions back?
While the Federal authorities may pass on the plethora of likely charges to avoid the appearance of political persecution, the state attorney in NY has been after Trump's companies for some years about taxable value of his properties there. He apparently quoted one number to the state tax authority and another larger number as collateral value for loans taken with Deutsche Bank shortly after.
And the President's pardon power only applies to Federal crimes, not state-level.
2024 may find him under house arrest if not doing the orange jumpsuit perpwalk.
a) I'm at the other end of the state (300 mi/450 km) from him and I don't want him here...
b) I learned after moving here 30 years back that any open freshwater bigger than a kiddie pool can be presumed to hold gators, and to never let your small pets or toddlers anywhere near waters' edge as a result. The tragic case of the child killed at Disney walking the lakefront with her parents comes to mind.
check the post https://headcrashing.wordpress.com/2019/05/03/negotiations-failed-how-oracle-killed-java-ee/ about the 'negotiations' between Oracle & Eclipse about moving the javax.* classes over; Oracle only wanted Oracle or Oracle-approved JDKs to be permitted, which would have broken neutrality from Eclipse and might have jeopardized their non-profit status. Pretty obviously concerned about alternate suppliers such as IBM, Azul, etc.
The vote went completely against Oracle's proposal (theirs the only vote in favor), and the process requires unanimity so the only option was what will probably be labeled as "The Great Renaming". Any mods to javax.* now require renaming to avoid legal fireworks. EJB, JAX-RS, JPA will all have to change as well. Forklift upgrade coming.
With the shift to lighter frameworks like Spring, Oracle has successfully executed a footgun maneuver to alienate dev's from bothering with EE going forward.
Rometti dropped big bucks to bring in Red Hat, whose cloud products are actually selling. Now Whitehurst is named company president. They probably couldn't hand him the reins so soon after the acquisition without the old-timers' shorts getting bunched, but they're clearly marking him as the next chief exec near-term.
IIRC, Apache Harmony -> Dalvik re-implemented the Java API calls with new code, rather like taking the chapter headings of a book and writing new content under each of them. As has been said earlier, the Sun bigwigs had effectively blessed the effort as a way of spreading Java further. Then came the buyout (it's well reported that Ellison had originally only wanted the software side of Sun, intending to monetize Java, but McNealy & co insisted on an all-or-nothing deal), and suddenly Dalvik -> Android, which has won the handset war by numbers, is a blatant act of plagarism. I suppose Larry needs to pay for the secret submarine base under his Lair of Eeeevil, er, private tropical island. That or those Dr Evil Nehru jackets are getting bid waaaay up on EBay...
The only useful thing about the SCOundrels was that it triggered a shedload of anti-FUD tactics such as OIN to prevent further rent-seekers.
Other than that, they need a stake through the heart, cremation at a crossroads and the ashes scattered across a field of garlic. Then nuke 'em from orbit 'cuz it's the only way to make sure...
The historical mindset is that the US was founded in armed rebellion against His Brittanic Majesty, and we need to remain well-armed should "the gummint" become too oppressive. The possibility that such an uprising would be winnable, even with the level of weaponry available to the average USian, is dubious at best.
The arms industry has peddled their wares with a mix of defending one's home (primarily against "the Other"), appealing to the above fantasy and down in the fine print, the legitimate uses of hunting and target shooting. Given the number of weapons at hand in the US, it can honestly be said that 99.9999% of gun owners are harmless, even the doomsday preppers stockpiling weapons afraid that The Aforesaid Gummint is coming in their Black Helicopters to seize them. That said, the loopholes in the existing rules for gun sales allow people who have no business owning firearms to do so, with the disastrous results we've seen over the years. Closing these loopholes up, including 'red flag' laws for legitimately disarming people under domestic restraining orders, judicial psych eval, etc would hopefully at least slow the rise in such tragedies.
The reality is that Vegas has an almighty shedload of available rooms, at reasonable cost (cheap rooms == more disposable dollars to lose at the tables...), cheap airfare to/from for the same reason, any amount of entertainment options (including the naughtier places off-Strip), and within driving distance to the southern California population centers, leading to it being a VERY popular locale for conferences.
The idea of running your IDE on one platform and attaching to another for deployment is questionable. Lazarus gives developers a native option, is not dependent on the survival of a particular vendor, and is obviously more affordable. I don't see how this Embarcadero product can remain viable in light of that.
It's pretty well known that Ellison originally only wanted the software side of Sun Micro and have the hardware fall to the wayside. McNealy properly insisted on an all-or-none deal. The presumption has always been that Larry wanted to monetize Java, but the availability of Too Many Other Options sank that, especially after Google took the almost-compatible Apache Harmony project and built Android on it. The Oracle v. Google legal battle is Ellison's attempt to get money for it anyway, despite it flying in the face of decades of reverse-engineering practice.
This latest spin on Java licensing is to get enterprises to cough up for support to avoid turning over Java versions twice yearly; Red Hat is undercutting that by offering LTS on OpenJDK running on RHEL or their JBoss middleware, and starting to offer support gigs for same on Wintel. Amazon is doing likewise on AWS with their 'Coretto' offering. Oracle appears to be successfully shooting themselves in the foot, and their Java offering may become irrelevant before long.
Google used the clean-room-developed Apache Harmony project for Android, which yes, used the same API call structure. They re-wrote all the content of those APIs to match up, but not using any of the actual Sun code. This is how reverse-engineering works (see BIOS, Linux, ... for examples).
If I took, say, one of the Harry Potter books, grabbed up the chapter titles BUT wrote new material under each, and put it out under a new title, would Rowling have any grounds for infringement? Doubtful.
Oracle is widely believed to have bought up Sun specifically to monetize Java (initially they'd only wanted the software side of the business and not SPARC; McNealy insisted on the whole bundle). Then Android went and took over the mobile world and Larry got peeved no one wanted to pony up for Java ME, so he unleashed the lawyers. Until Oracle threw in the patent issue, which sent it to the patent-friendly appeals court, they'd been losing consistently. Now Google is trying to hold onto that by begging the Supremes to ignore common engineering practice and make Google pay out.
The problem is that this jeopardizes most cases of reverse engineering, etc. Seattle Computing re-implementing the CP/M interface for 86-DOS (look where *that* went...), Compaq/AMI/Phoenix/... re-implementing the original BIOS for All Those Clones, hell Torvalds re-implementing from the AT&T docs to get Linux (good God, nobody tell SCOX or they'll wake up again).
The previous poster talking about taking an album and writing new music to the song titles and releasing it as new content is probably best; Oracle's claim that API design is Hard Work and should be subject to copyright is so much rubbish. The potential impact to the software industry in general if reverse engineering is effectively banned would be tremendous.
It's pretty much a given that Larry bought out Sun intending to monetize Java; the scuttlebutt at the time was that Oracle had come in only wanting the software side of Sun, but McNealy & co insisted on them buying the whole package.
Given the spectacular failure Oracle's had re: squeezing cash out of dog+world for Java, and the apparent failure to squeeze the Googleplex for the Java API copying in Android (thankfully for the sake of future reverse engineering...), you see last quarter how they've basically pushed most folks over to OpenJDK vs. their own release. My Current Employer, while having Oracle support, is wrangling how best to deal with all the third-party kit coming in built to OpenJDK vs. Oracle and whether to go with the flow and jump over themselves.
"And why is UN involved of all entities?"
The ITU is basically All The Legacy Telcos, who are still miffed that the ever-so-elegant OSI protocol stack [/sarcasm] lost out to a bunch of neckbeards who actually did *engineering*, and have been trying to claw back some validity ever since. "rough consensus & running code" >>>> kilopage specs with zero interoperability.
[ I was *at* AT&T late 80s, they had an OSI package for their nascent 3B midrange line, and a third-party TCP stack for 'transitional purposes'. Shocked the feces out of them when World+Dog ignored the former, even/especially inhouse... ]
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