Posts by Matt Bryant 9690 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2007
Little ex-EDS birdie told me some people in EDS were (alledgedly) happy at the idea of moving goalposts as they saw the whole project as a never-ending source of revenue. Unfortunately for them, it seems someone saw that the whole project was a dumper and killed it off for them.
"....all those trained military professionals failing to accept what you know, we're best at everything, no matter what the evidence is....." A prime example would be the French military experts when they produced the AMX-30, which took the idea of mobility-as-protection to the extreme (in reality it was more the idea of it's-French-and-having-paper-thin-armour-and-a-French-smoothbore-gun-makes-it-cheaper). This produced an MBT so poor that the French contingent in the 1991 Gulf War had to be put out wide on the left flank so that there would be no chance they would meet the Iraqi Guards in their T-72s. Why? Well, even the French had to admit the T-72 was a superior tank. That was the tank the Abrams and Challengers were mopping up with no problems. French tankers at the time were heard wishing they had "the tanks the Americans and British have". You see, there is not one "expert military opinion", there are many, and it is only actual combat that goes to demonstrate which design philosophy is right (or, to put it another way, how often the French are wrong).
Another point which escaped your myopic examination was that Challenger2 has the advanced and still top-secret "Dorchester" armour, which has restricted the number of countries that would even be allowed to bid for it (I hear that certain Army bods were not amused when the Omanis got in-depth info on the "Dorchester" armour when they bought Challenger2s in 2001). Neither the Abrams nor Leopard2 are as constrained as they both use much simpler, cheaper and less-effective armour technology (in fact there are several US Army officers on record as saying the updated Abrams is now behind other NATO tanks when it comes to protection). The armour was one of the key factors which meant the Challenger2 was the only allied tank to go throught he Iraqi campaign without losing a single tank to enemy action, unlike the Abrams.
"....Clearly our armoured legions will pour over the Leopard 2 and M1 equipped armies of the world...." Which is as about as stupid a statement as possible. We currently don't have any enemies with either, but if we did then Challenger2 with the L30 gun and HESH would still have a long-range advantage over either the Abrams or Leopard2. I'd also like to point out for any French readers that the same still applies to the much-hyped AMX-50 Le Clerc as it is not HESH proof as they claim, and the Thales gunsight they use (a "development" of the same used on the Challenger2 but matched to the French GIAT CN120-26 gun) has the same limitation as that on the Abrams - it is only programmed out to 4000m, and doubtful if it would penetrate Challenger2 frontally at even 3000m. In fact, even the French aren't too happy with Le Clerc, as a French Army review of the tank's performance in Kosovo on NATO peacekeeping duty only rated it as "satisfactory" , but I suspect you'll say that wasn't the same "military experts" as you meant (meanwhile, Challenger2's NATO ratings in Bosnia and Kosovo by non-UK experts was "excellent"). But I'm told Le Clerc's extra-long gunbarrel is great for hanging extra-large white flags from....
"....Challenger 2 is wonderful, even perfect...." No, the Challenger2 is not perfect, but it is probably the best compromise design for classic tank-vs-tank warfare, particulalry in the open terrain of the Middle East. No tank design is truly perfect for all scenarios, especially in modern warfare where the enemy is often a terrorist/millitant/freedom-fighter/islamofacsit (delete as your political views dictates) happy to hide amongst civillians in an urban environment where the classic MBT often can't go. But, just as the current Israeli operations/invasion/holocaust (delete as your gulibility level dictates) demonstrate, air power alone cannot solve the issue, infantry need to go forward and clear the ground, and when the ground is open enough the infantry want armour and MBTs in support.
And for the British Army that has to be a developed Challenger tank, though probably in reduced numbers unless Putin really goes for broke in resurrecting the Cold War and we have to scale back up to meet the threat of a Soviet tank invasion of Eastern Europe. But by then NuLabour will probably have signed us up into some fell-good-but-hopelessly-inefficient-and-ineffective "European Army", where we sacrifice our ability to operate independently but get to massively cut the defence budget. That really would sign the death warrant for the British armour industry.
"First, I note that you don't touch the point that the MOD is eliminating Challenger regiments as quickly as possible, replacing them with light reconnaissance kit...." Quick pop quiz - how much do you think a "light recce" brigade costs compared to a Challenger2 brigade? Don't mistake political cost-cutting with a declaration of combat capability, as only an idiot would say that a "light recce" vehicle could fulfill the MBT role. Such idiocy led to Brit tankers in 1940 and '41 using the Light Tank MkVI as a cruiser tank. It also has nothing to do with the "highest levels of the Army" not having confidence in the Challie, it is political cost-cutting disguised as role-change. The generals wanted to keep the number of regiments in existance as it is easier in wartime to convert a light recce brigade to a proper armoured brigade than to start from scratch and build a new brigade. The politicians contend that with the switch to more "peacekeeping" roles there is less need for so many Challenger2 tanks, so they want more "patrol and recce" vehicles. There isn't enough money to replace Warrior and keep all teh existing Challenger units, especially not after Gordon Brown screwed the economy over so badly. But no British general has said they don't want Challenger2 AFAIK, and I suspect if you told them they don't need an MBT they would view you with the same level of amused pitying as I do.
"....The reality is that Challenger 2 was so at-best-average-if-very-expensive that we don't even try and sell it any more. We've completely left the market...." You are assuming that because no-one else saw fit to buy it it was somehow a lesser product when in fact it was a very expensive product built to a virtually unique criteria. The memory of how bad British tankers had it in the early stages of WW2 has meant that every British tank since has always been built with one key point in mind - better armour and better gun than any potential competitior. This is a key reason behind the British rejection of the Rheinmetal smoothbore gun - it was nowhere as good at range as the 120mm L11 and did not offer the measure of superiority as the Soviet 125mm smoothbore which was then known to be coming soon. The Chieftain was designed to not just be better than the Soviet T-55 and T-62 designs, but to be able to destroy them at a range where the Soviets would be unable to penetrate the Chieftain's armour. This made the Chieftain heavy and expensive, and only the Middle Eastern countries (Kuwait, Jordan, Oman and Iran) had the cash to try it. In the Iran-Iraq war, even with relatively poor Iranian crews, the Iranian Chieftains dominated the tank battles to the point where Iraqi crews would avoid combat with them. Indeed, the Chieftains were much preferred by their crews to the more numerous American M60 tanks, and came to relie on the Cheiftains as an elite vanguard. This superiority had been recognised pre-war by the Shah's decision to invest in the Khalid development of the Chieftain that would become the Challenger1. So much for your assertion that the Challenger was average. It is intersting to note that American evaluations of Iran's current capability still rate their Chieftains as the most serious threat to American armour, despite the Iranians having a number of more modern designs.
A little known and interesting fact is that in 1969 the Israelis, having valued the Centurion for so long and despite the availability of the cheaper M60, wanted the Chieftain. They actually signed a purchase agreement at almost 2.5 times the unit price of the M60, only for the deal to be scuppered by Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his Labour cabinet in a fit of political-correctness. This cancellation kicked off the Israeli development of the Merkava as the M60 did not give them the level of crew protection that the Chieftain would have, and because they wanted the ability to produce a home-grown tank so they wouldn't have to suffer from more PC idiocy. It is interesting to consider that the Israeli design followed the same rules as Britian's - better armour and a better gun than the competition. Please note the Israelis have more modern armoured combat experience than any other country, and they chose the same design criteria as the UK. It is intersting to wonder if the Israelis had not been refused the Chieftain order, would they have later bought the Challie? Please also note the Israelis did not consider either the Leopard1 or the Leopard2 good enough. Oh, and that Merkava has no export customers either, but is still the preferred choice of Israeli tank crews and has been rated by US experts as superior to the M1 in a number of areas.
And back to the Canadians. They originally bought the Leopard1 after a very interesting set of trials. One criteria they set top of their list of priorities was road mobility, not surprising given the large size the Canada. It was pointed out at the time that the likely combat role was to be a defensive war in Europe against the Soviets, but the Canadians ignored that. Then we had the much debated gunnery trial, where the Chieftain's FCS was slated for taking longer to compute a solution. The Canadians chose to ignore the fact that the Chieftain scored more hits than the Leopard (a better score than all other contenders), but then maybe the Canadians thought that being able to fire fast but innacurately was somehow better. At the time the Americans complained the trial was slanted to get a result that guaranteed any option other than an American one, but it also seems hey didn't want the Chieftain winning either.
So then we get to Afghanistan, and the Canadians need MBTs quickly. They have a load of crews and servicing staff familiar with the Leopard, is it a surprise they went for what they knew? What you also failed to consider was that there were no Challengers going spare, we were actually short ourselves at the time. So the Canadian choice of second-hand Leopard2s is no surprise and in no way adds any weight to your argument. An even better counter is that the Australians decided against replacing Leopard1s with Leopard2s in 2004, instead going with the US M1A1.
So merely saying the Challie is cr*p 'cos no-one else bought it is easily shown to be wrong. You show the Canadians as some great tanking authority, when in fact they have not fought a single tank action since Korea, whereas I can show the most experienced tank force in the world wanted the Challie's forebear and went on to develop a very comparable tank only because of Lbaour stupidity. I suggest you read some more and then think again.
"....What I am trying to say that the Leopard being really good with APFSDS ammo (and unable to use HESH) is a good thing for what the customer wanted, and its only the British that wanted a rifled gun. Its that kind of parochial thinking that has caused us so many problems in exports. Leopard does what it needs to, and we found ourselves saying that it doesn't do what it doesn't need to, because we know best....."
And we were right. A Challenger2, using HESH, has the record for the longest range tank vs tank kill on record. In the Gulf War, Abrams crews bragged about how they could kill Saddam's T-72s at 2km with depleted uranium APDSFS rounds, and the T-72s couldn't defeat an Abrams until it got down to 1km. But the Yanks also admitted they didn't fire at ranges over 3km because they were unlikely to kill a T-72 at that range, in fact their FCS can still only range out to 4km with APDSFS rounds. The Abrams uses the Rheinmetal 120mm smoothbore gun which was trialed in the Challie as the L55. However, the Challie record kill was a T-72 at 5+km using HESH from the rifled L30 gun. It was one of many kills the Challies scored in the 3+km range in Iraq, a range where the British crews were very confidant of a first shot kill against any tank Saddam had. Still want to pretend the Rheinmetal gun is better?
Folding to the rediculous NATO pressure to use a smoothbore is similar to when we dropped the .280 and EM2 in favour of the 5.56mm round and "NATO harmony". It is only because Rheinmetal have developed an inferior HESH round for the smoothbore that we are going to accept it. And it is inferior as the fin-stabilised HESH for the smoothbore is not as accurate at range as the L31 HESH round fired from the rifled L30 gun of the Challenger2. Once again, political considerations have won out over proven facts, but then don't let that stop you posting more twaddle for our amusement.
Leopard 2 has always been offered a lot cheaper than Challenger2, which is the simple reason why it has sold more. Challenger2 is probably the most expensive MBT on offer. Leopard2 is in no way a better all-rounder than Challenger2, the Challie having a better gun with a more accurate FCS and better armour, which is a lot bigger combat advantage than the often quoted Leopard's ROADspeed - across country, as shown on numerous NATO exercises, Leopard2 has zero advantage. Leopard1 and 2 are the outcome of the joint program the British left because they realised it would not give them the MBT they wanted, and neither even fits the criteria drawn up for the Chieftain let alone Challenger2 or FRES. Please remember that popular does not equal best, otherwise rich people would drive Yugos instead of Mercedes.
RE: Chris Thomas - take a look at many of the modern anti-tank choppers, do you see the way the sighting systems are being developed to move from the nose to mast-mounts above the rotar? The Eurocopter Tiger is a good example. Take a look at the Longbow Apache and check out where the millimetric radar is. That's because the modern anti-tank doctrine is to keep the chopper behind cover as much as possible. The reason is a host of field systems have become available to attack a chopper that stays out in view or hovers for too long in one spot. Yes, the tank will have a hard time getting a shot at a chopper hiding behind a hill, but the chopper has to pop up to find the target and take the shot, and this is when it is vulnerable.
Even Hellfire needs the target spotted and marked by a laser (AFAIK, the TV and self-homing variants still don't work), so that means someone has to put themselves in a position where they have line-of-sight for the duration of the missile's flight. If it is the chopper itself, it has no means of distracting or stopping the faster APDS or HESH round from say a Challenger2, whilst the tank can deploy smoke and move after or during the shot. As Jonathan Schofield noted above, he could fire accurately to 22 miles with the old 120mm gun from the Chieftain, which is a bit further than the max 5 miles range of the Hellfire. The Hellfire then still has to make a critical hit, which means holding the laser steady on a specific point on a probably moving target. On the other hand, a hit from a 120mm HE round on just about any part of the helicopter airframe will mean one less chopper, period, and if the chopper makes an evasive action it is highly likely to lose the laser mark on the target, which means a wasted Hellfire. This line of thought has led the Israelis to test using tank-fired airburst shells loaded with flechettes (made infamous recently for killing a Palstinian TV journalist) as a means of forcing an attacking helo to break off an attack and drop laser lock.
More worryingly for chopper crews, some people have pointed out that MBTs are now so expensive it makes sense to give them a proper anti-aircraft suite. It would be a simple task to mount the same millimetric radar from the Longbow Apache in a retractable mount on a Challenger3, tied into the main gun's ballistic computer, and then you have a system that could accurately target helos in all weather and light conditions at ranges beyond any current or planned anti-tank missile. Take it a step further and use a laser-guided 120mm shell (tech already proven with Copperhead), with the laser designator aimed by the radar, and suddenly the helo is at such a disadvantage you might start questioning why we are planning on buying more anti-tank helos.....
So, you see, the Hellfire-vs-tank scenario is not as cut and dried as a lot of people like to make out.
RE: Martin Gregorie - the Amercian M3 light tank, aka Honey or Stuart, didn't shed tracks on tight turns because it couldn't make tight turns! Unlike British tanks, which could turn on the spot, it had a turning radius of about forty feet. Whilst this was fine in the open desert, it was a big problem later in the European theatre. It wasn't until the M5 version with twin engines arrived that the Honey could trun properly. The Stuart also had two other big problems due to the radial aero-engine in the version supplied to the British (the Guberson diesel engined variant was kept by the Yanks). Firstly, it drank high-octane aviation fuel, which meant it burnt VERY well. Any hit penetrating the enginebay just about guaranteed a fire so fierce it often melted the armour! Secondly, the engine was rear-mounted but had a driveshaft from the rear to the front sprockets. This ran through the middle of the fighting compartment at waist-height, stopping the crew from moving with the turret if it was traversed. In consequence, the turret was rarely turned in combat and the crew were reliant on the driver pointing the tank roughly in the target's direction so the gunner could then make the minor adjustment to score a hit.
The Honey was popular with the British as it was fast and reliable, two vital requirements in a recce tank, and had better armour and a better gun when compared to the tiny Light Tank MkVI it often replaced. However, when the Crusader was finally sorted, the 6pdr-equipped MkIII was preferred for battle recce by the experienced 7th Armoured Division at Alamein as it was lower, heavier armoured, and had a much better gun. Again, it was a case of there being plenty supplied by the Yanks. For real recce, the British preferred to use quieter, smaller and faster armoured cars.
But, to get back to the point of the article, the British armoured industry should survive on its own merits, not Government hand-outs, otherwise it is just an expensive postponement of the inevitable. Of course, if those hand-outs can be disguised as "upgrades" and "attritional replacements" for existing Army vehicles then that's just fine. ;)
One of the reasons British tanks lagged at the start of the war, apart from the idiotic doctrine of infantry and cruiser tanks, was that a crippling tax had been introduced pre-war on large engined vehicles, which killed off the development of commercial vehicles with the big engines and gearboxes strong enough to power real tanks. This meant the tank designers were stuck with second-hand bus engines and no diesels (the latter being less prone to going up in flames if hit) or using the Nuffield-licensed Liberty aero-engine, an unreliable Yank design which had come across the pond with the Christie tank design.
The Yanks in the '30s realised tanks would need more power and went staright to aircraft engines. They used large radials for the M3 light and medium tanks, some of these being used for Shermans before production of the latter outstripped supply and they resorted to oddities such as three straight-eights welded into a common crankcase. In the UK, British designers soldiered on with the unreliable Liberty engine despite better UK-designed options being available. This restriction on engine power meant UK tanks had to be smaller to be lighter. The Valentine tank was a good example - reliable (it used the mentioned bus engines!) and reasonably well armoured, it was restricted to a three-man turret in its first version as there wasn't the power for it to have the extra space for a loader. A bigger turret or hull would have meant more armour, therefore more weight. Even with just three men, it still only managed 15mph!
Another problem with early WW2 British tanks were two restrictions on width. Firstly, all designs had to fit narrow UK rail flatbeds, despite the fact they were highly likely to be used in Europe which had wider flatbeds anyway. This limited the overall width of the tank. Then, there was an insistance that the turret must not overhang the tracks because it was feared a hit on the track covers would jam the turret! The Sherman was designed without these restrictions, and whilst narrow enough to fit UK flatbeds, its overhanging turret and hull would not have been allowed in a British tank. These stupid rules, made up by "experts" in the civil service without a clue about what the tanks needed to do, effectively ruined any chance of the British producing a good tank in the early war years. They were eventually removed for the Centurion's design. By comparison, in Canada they produced the Ram tank (based on the US M3 Grant/Lee) with a central turret capable of taking the 6pdr long before the Sherman arrived, and in Australia they produced the AC2 Sentinel, which was eventually tried out with both a 25pdr howitzer and the 17pdr. The latter is especially galling as the main designer was a British tank expert loaned to the Aussies!
In short, British tankies in WW2 suffered because of idiotic politicians' and civil servants' meddling. Left to their own devices, British designers produced market-leading kit such as the Vickers-Armstrong Six Ton design which dominated the tank market from the late '20s through to the late '30s and was arguably the ancestor of the T-34. No doubt, similar meddling today has left our soldiers short of proper armoured patrol vehicles.
The biggest threat to modern helicopters on the battlefield, after enemy fighters, is modern tanks. The gun control system on the Challenger2 is capable enough to hit and completely destroy any current anti-tank helo - even Apache - at a range longer than most helo-carried anti-tank missiles. This was first realised in the Six Day War when the Israelis managed to shoot down Syrian Gazelles using the old Centurions and the L7 gun. Even the kinetic impact of the plain APDS rounds would be bad enough, but most modern MBTs carry guns of 120mm or larger, which fire what are actually quite heavy explosive rounds. The 120mm HESH round from the Challenger2, for example, carries more explosive than the standard British or US field guns of World War 2, and is actually preferred over APDS for killing tanks at long range.
Sorry, all those with a social life can tune out this bit whilst I set Mr Page straight.
You still need infantry to hold ground, and infantry will always want tanks in support. Air power may have won the Iraq war, but tanks were vital to secure the land and make the peace. It was armour that swept away Saddam's troops, and armour that helped put down the Mahdi Army coup attempts. Anyone doubting this can read Dan Mills' book "Sniper One", which relates the simple plan the Brits used to break the back of the OMS in AL Amarah in Iraq. They simply drove Warriors with some Challenger2s into the middle of the OMS neighbourhood, parked up and let the OMS come at them. The OMS couldn't resist the "come on if you think you're hard enough" offer and lost the majority of their best figters trying to get past the Challengers at the PBIs. The infantry loved the Challengers' ability to soak up RPG hits that would otherwise have been targetting them, and unlike air support which had restrictions on how close the bombs could be dropped, the Challengers could provide hard cover and shoot right into buildings at point blank range. Unfortuantely, political considerations and the pressence of too many reporters wouldn't let the same tactics be tried in Basra. Whilst tanks have been of less use in the mountanous areas of Afghanistan, there are still plenty of flat areas where tanks would be useful to the Yanks (they were to the Soviets), but then there is the problem of getting them there in the first place.
And as for the denigration of British tanks in the First and Second World Wars, you have to be a muppet or a sailor to think so. True, British tanks didn't make a big impact until Cambrai in 1917, but it was the failure of the generals to understand what armour could do, and the consequent failure of the infantry to come up and hold the ground gained by the tanks, not a failure of the armour. It was tanks that eventually punched the holes in the German lines that forced the Germans to seek an armistace, without tanks it is very unlikely massed infantry attacks like those of the Somme in 1916 would ever have been able to break the Germans. The fact that the Germans saw the tank as what caused their downfall is shown by how seriously they developed their Panzer armies for the Second World War, using Fuller's doctrine to produce the devastatingly effective (and tank-led) Blitzkrieg in 1940.
Yes, British tanks at the start of WW2 were mainly very poor, except for maybe the Matilda2. But we did produce designs that matched or exceeded the Sherman. The Cromwell was faster, lower, and had thicker armour, and in later versions a gun as equally poor as the US 75mm. The Comet was definately superior in every respect, and the Churchill superior in many except for the crucial lack of speed. The Sherman dominated because the Yanks could turn out a hundred for every tank we could make. In truth, the Sherman was out-classed by 1943 and it wasn't a match for the German Panther or Tiger unless it was upgunned with the British 17-pounder. The US attempt to upgun the Sherman - the high-velocity 76mm M1 - had a problem in that the steel shot would shatter at combat ranges when impacting on the German hardened armour, making the 76mm often LESS effective than the old 75mm! The final British tank of WW2 which was just too late for combat was the excellent Centurion, developments of which went on to dominate the later Middle East wars, being much preferred by the Israelis over the Super Sherman, Patton and even the M60.
The British Challenger tank series have proved very succesful in the Iraq wars, some would say better than the Yank M1. Whilst it would probably be cheaper to buy American armour in the long-run, it may not mean receiving better designs. And simply structuring all our purchases around counter-insurgency would put us in the same boat (or lack of suitable boats) as we had before the Falklands War, where our forces were almost too tied to the idea of a European land war to be able to successfully defeat a foreign threat to a distant part of the Kingdom. What is required is a honest review and probably a large cut back in our commitments, not our forces, and definately not in armour. Let some of our NATO "allies" pick up some of the slack.
In the meantime, my answer to the obvious hand-out appeal from the armour industry would be "go sell abroad, we'll support you as legally as we can (and illegally as we can get away with), but you don't get anything for nothing". Start with Lebanon, a country that Saudi Arabia seems determined should not fall back into Syrian or Russian control, they should represent a good opportunity, and it would be hilarious if American or Saudi money ended up paying for British armour.
Much as I wouldn't mind seeing anything to do with Oprah (all-time most annoying woman on TV) taking a kicking, I can't see heavyweights like Amazon sitting quietly in the corner and letting this parasite build a possible precedence case to come at them with later. I suspect Amazon would be quite happy to provide extensive evidence of prior art.
Step back from the PC-vs-Mac arguments a sec and think - both vendors are taking tech and making a consumer solution. Both will sell to respective markets and probably quite well. Both vendors will profit and survive. Then consider Sun, which simply throws tech like ZFS out the door, trumpets it as "cutting egde", etc, etc, and fails to make any money from it. Sun seriously needs to ditch Ponytail and poach some senior Apple, Dell or HP execs if they want to survive.
Of course, in the meantime I'll carry on using my DRM-free and much, much cheaper home-built Linux NAS (it even has hardware RAID5).
No, really! You see, satnav signals are very weak, all you would have to do is wrap the antena in aluminium foil and - bingo! - you are always doing 0mph on your drive! Perfect if the clots want to use this for road toll purposes. If they get suspicious, use a fake satnav signal, all you would need is a low-powered transmitter to swamp the weak satellite signals and you can tell the limiter you are wherever you want to be. Such kit is already used by hijackers in the States to steal satnav tracked trucks and cars and details are all over the web.
So be quiet and let the twits implement this, and then we can all get back to driving how we like!
I disagree. I have worked with and used every version of Exchange/Outlook and Notes/Domino from version 4 of the client, and I can with a clear conscience state that Exchange was and is a superior email solution in every version. Sure, as you say, Domino/Notes is a document storage solution - well, actually it's a database with an a torrid documentation storage solution and truly awful email. I even look back and remember all the security hassles of Windows servers, the virus alerts and the continual updates, and I STILL would NOT have swapped it for Domino/Notes by choice. I have worked with Groupwise with Blackberry BES solutions and - even though I didn't enjoy it - I'd still rather grit my teeth and go with Groupwise over Domino/Notes. Frankly, apart from the avid coders who'd probably like to rake through the code simply for interest's sake, I can't see anyone in the Linux community wanting Domino/Notes in the current state.
What I want is for M$ to really get in with the community and release Exchange on Linux (pref on Integrity so I can have one cluster of servers replace 30+ Windoze Exchange instances), but then that's unlikely as M$ would lose out on all that Windows server licensing revenue that Exchange drags through.
Your example applies only to unskilled labour, of which there is still an excess, especially as supermarkets can tap into part-time workers such as housewifes who traditionally do not expect high wages. In other areas where education is required (such as computing), wages have risen as competing capitalist companies have had to compete for a finite resource - educated (skilled) workers. Had you looked further into your example and considered the next level on the ladder - supermarket management - you would have found their wages have risen as supermarkets have had to offer more to attract the grade of employee they require to tell you they haven't got enough till girls.
My solution for unemployed merchant self-abusers would be to send them all to the US to fly our RAF Predator drones. These guys are used to staring at screens for hours and then pressing a button when they judge the moment to be right, it shouldn't be beyond their abilities to teach them to remotely fly a Predator, and we can pay them in lapdances (quite cheap in Vegas, or so I'm told). Then, if we can make a STOVL Predator, we can get rid of the need for any Fleet Air Arm and just fly Preds off the new carriers with the bonus of seriously p*ssing off Lewis Page!
....the shock and horror to iBoners here in the UK if they appeared in Asda! Asda are owned by Walmart (some Asda stores in the UK were rebranded as Wlamarts) and already sell some 02 phones, it would be hilarious if they started selling the iBoners' fave fashion statement in probably the most down-market superstore short of Lidl!
I have to agree - whilst the technology in these projects are amazing, the stories are getting pretty mediocre. I was very unimpressed with "The Golden Compass", a very forgettable movie, and in no way comparable to "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" or even the "Aladin" cartoon movie. In fact, the other week I enjoyed watching "Lilo and Stitch" with the kids (about the twentieth time) much more than "The Golden Compass", and the kids did too.
I watched a documentary on "Bladerunner" the other day and was surprised when they said none of the effects were computer animated but used models and stop-motion photography tricks. For some reason, I'd assumed the super-slick effects had to be in some way computer generated. Maybe Hollywood needs to concentrate more on stories than technology. Having said that, I am fascinated by the tech behind it all, and would be interested in knowing more about the solution. Did Dell, HP or Infortrends release any whitepapers on it as I can't find any on the web?
And a Merry Christmas to you too, Dave. Haven't seen you post since your expansive and very informative marketeering exercise on the "Sun double teams Xeon chip" article back in August. However, I have noticed a quantity of David Halko comments on the Sun blogsites, and I was especially tickled by one at http://blogs.sun.com/bmseer/entry/new_new_news where you were complaining about a T2000 benchmark session; "....I am sure that the server scores would be much better than the competition... since performance is not everything!" Says it all, really. But back to the point.
"...."Sun failed to diversify and failed to innovate, which is why it is now so deep in the doodoo" - that is why they sell & support M$ Windoze, Linux, Solaris, SPARC, Intel, AMD? LOL!" <Sigh> Like a lot of Sunshiners, you fail to understand that diversity does not mean just staying in one quarter of the datacenter. Hp, IBM and Dell all have products that span both inside and outside the datacenter, with hp probably being the most diverse. What this means is that if you fall behind in one area, returns from others will still allow you to invest in research and develop back to parity or being the market leader. Sun's problem is the narrow range of products means it is not generating enough money to invest in research and marketting activities. Hence it is poorly placed to meet the downturn, poorly placed to compete with competitors able to loss-lead and make the money back in other areas, and poorly placed to innovate with new products. Sun joined the Wintel/Lintel party so late and after decades of abusing both Windows and Linux communities is it any surprise they lag so far behind in sales?
"...SUN led in 1, 2, and 4 CPU socket SPEC performance over the past 2 years..." What SPEC bench was that? I wasn't aware there was a SPEC_fastest-loss-of-market-cap. Of course, the market seems to have missed your mystery SPEC results too, seeing as Sun's marketshare is rapidly declining.
"....that is why NFS, JAVA, OpenOffice, cluster file system, etc. all came from SUN and SUN re-sells Linux servers?...." NFS was developed for UNIX, not Linux, originally in 1983. Sun had no intention of it being used anywhere other than UNIX and with the intent of embedding Sun OS in the commercial datacenter to allow it to attach Sun workstations to mainframes and other vendors' UNIX servers. Linux didn't kick off until 1991, so nothing to do with Sun "working with the Linux community".
Java was originally released in 1995 in an attempt by Sun to stop Microsoft taking over the webserving bizz Sun had come to depend on. Sun had to give it away free as they were being killed by Windows. Despite claiming it was "open source", Sun retained close control and didn't release the whole code when it finally GPL'd some of it in 2007, which exposes Sun's claims of openess as just so much baloney. Sun has still made zero money from Java and is unlikely to. Instead, competitors like hp have used better Java performance to sell hp-ux servers in the datacenter, and cheaper Lintel/Wintel kit at the edge, accellerating Sun's decline. Again, this had nothing to do with Sun "working with the Linux community", just another failed Sun survival strategem.
"...OpenOffice...." You mean the product Sun bought from Germany's Star Division Corp? The product where Sun signed a deal with Micorosft to protect it's own StarOffice bizz but hoping that M$ would then sue the OpenOffice community out of bizz (see http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/09/16/HNopenoffice_1.html). You actually want to show Sun's supposed support for Linux by highlighting a product where Sun cynically tried to shaft them? Oooh, you must be a whizz at chess - not!
"....cluster file system...." Which cluster file system? There are plenty out there. And don't even go there with Slowaris clustering, a product so unreliable Veritas made a fortune from selling Veritas Cluster Server to Sun shops.
"....SUN re-sells Linux servers?..." Yes, Sun resells Windows and Linux, at a much slower rate than hp or IBM. And only because they have to as SPARC/Slowaris is a dead product and Sun - after years of FUDing Linux, Windows and x86 - had no other option for survival. The difference is hp and IBM have years of experience, integrated products and solid services offerings, whilst Sun has a few boxes and a lot of ill-will.
"....I bet Solaris will fork processes faster than OpenVMS! What a trip!...." I know, but the VMS trolls were looking glum. ;)
Here's hoping Santa kept you on the good boys' list and bought you http://www.amazon.com/Linux-Administration-Beginners-Guide-Fifth/dp/0071545883/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230215519&sr=1-3
/point, laugh in a festive manner, you get the idea.
RE: Bill:
"HP Sales Grunt, HP Sales Grunt, HP Sales Grunt..." This is just another example of Sunshiner blinkers - you can post the same fact over and over and they just don't listen. I'm not HP sales, get over it. I am one of the majority of customers Sun is failing to satisfy.
"....Oracle used the same legalize that they put in all white papers of the sort...." No they didn't. I have plenty of Oracle and vendor whitepapers without any such statement. I have even seen old Sun/Oracle papers without a statement like that.
"....The fact that you only believe in SPEC and TPC says a lot about you...." Let me explain how the enterprise works seeing as you obvioulsy haven't been there. At the top are a whole lot of people without much IT knowledge called "the board". They sit down, talk to analysts, look at the market, and try and predict where they want the business to go in X years. Then they draw up a list of business requirements to get there, and then ask us in IT what we will need to fulfill those bizz reqs. This usually means the discussion starts with an application selection, not an OS. If the application only runs on one platform (say IBM mainframe) and there is no viable alternative, then the choice is clear. But, if you go for something say like SAP, where there are many options, then you need a starting point to compare them. In such situations, using SPEC and TPC raw figures as suggested by the app vendor will get you in the right ballpark and save you having to test every option out there. Then you can use a PoC to compare (which is also a good way to get the vendors concerned into a price-war ;) ). That is why SPEC and TPC are still valid.
"....As a matter of fact SPEC and TPC say exactly nothing about how a system will work with these industry benchmarks...." Strange then that Sun used to sprout them so often when SPARC had competitive figures. But now they've fallen off the performance map they're keen to avoid that type of comparison. What a surprise - NOT!
RE: AC:
"Clearly you're running scared, attacking what you don't understand...." Running scared from what? We have less and less Slowaris in our environment every year. There is a simple reason - we do what we need to do better and cheaper on other platforms. This seems to reflect the way of the market as shown by Sun's awful market position. The only people running scared are the Sunshiners.
"....But maybe, just maybe if you actually tried to learn Solaris, you'd find that you actually like it. Performance is WAY improved since the 400Mhz processors you obviously last used when running Solaris...." We have a small contingent of Sunshiners that insist we appraise Slowaris regularly against hp-ux and RHEL. Seeing as we also have a policy of trying to avoid vendor lockin, we usually take tenders from at least two parties. This means I have tested Slowaris on x86 blades from Sun, hp and IBM, against WIndows and RHEL, and Slowaris on Niagara and M-series against hp-ux, RH and Windows on Integirty (we do still have some VMS but that is usually for apps where we don't want to port to another OS). We have in a few instances bought FSC kit for Slowaris apps where we couldn't or wouldn't port due to difficulty, but otherwise we have not bought any new Sun kit for over three years, even when Sun walked in with their pants round their ankles, because they had the least to offer. In every major project it was the board that signed off, and they have zero loyalty to any vendor, they just look at our PoC results, prices and vendor relationship. It may amuse you to know that in one instance I actually recommended some Niagara kit for a web-based project but the board went for RHEL on Xeon instead, mainly because the RHEL option was cheaper and proven.
"....PH-UX isn't exactly a screaming perf-fest - nobody in the real world is running it!..." Well we are, so I can calmly ignore the rest of your childish rant. In fact, hp-ux on Integrity is gaining share on Slowaris on SPARC/Niagara, as the IDC and Gartner market figures show. As an example, go check the telecoms billing market, which used to be a Slowaris paradise - it is now ruled by hp Integrity. And one reason is hp's wider, deeper product portfolio puts it in a better position to meet all a customer's requirements. Sun failed to diversify and failed to innovate, which is why it is now so deep in the doodoo.
"...Why would I want an OS from a company that makes more money from printer ink than anything else?..." Oh dear, your snobbery is showing. Go check the figures, whilst hp make plenty of money from the printer bizz (a case of innovation - they didn't just get to where they are by hoping, they diversified and innovated), they also make shedloads from x86, storage, software and big iron, amongst others. The reason you want an OS from company like that is because they will have the money to invest in research and development. Unlike Sun, where they are bleeding through their reserves at such a rate I have seen analysts' reports saying they will be broke inside three years. You can sneer at print all you like, but hp's print bizz will be around long after JAVA has been delisted and Sun relegated to the Silicon Valley museums.
"...Working with the community? Yes - Sun obviously doesn't know how to do that as NFS, JAVA, OpenOffice, RPC, XDR were all just figments of imagination...." Lol, but the difference is hp and IBM work with the community an make money from Linux, whereas Sun just p*ss off the community and make vritually zero money from Linux, and SFA from Open Solaris. Sun is making a big loss on open source and the revenue from the x64 servers is sold is not going to make enough in the long run to keep Sun afloat without radical trimming of both the Sun product lines and staff. Java is a prime example of Sun failing to make any return on an expensive project.
"....HP are certainly no innovators in terms of the Linux world...." Really? So how come hp have people on a number of Linux steering commitees then? Unlike Sun. And how come hp were supporting all their x86 range with Linux when Schwartz was still mouthing off about "Solaris on SPARC and nothing else"? Take the blinkers off, take a deep breath, and then do some reading. Hp's long involvement in Linux is on record, based on the idea of using Linux as a COMPLIMENTARY product to hp-ux and Windows, rather than the Sun's history of fearing, FUDing and fighting Linux.
"....where IS the PH-UX source?..." Why should hp open source hp-ux? They don't need to. But they did open source OpenVMS, arguably a much better product than Slowaris, especially on Integrity with hp's superior storage and software offerings (gotta keep the VMS trolls happy, they're mainly old and get all grouchy round Christmas time).
But it is the season of goodwill, so I'll lay off the Sunshiners and simply wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and hopefully Santa will bring you all some Linux skills!
As I recall, Lustre was just one option - hp also used SteelEye. Hp's use of Luster is historic and pre-dates the PolyServe purchase, and Veritas were very late getting into the Linux party so hp simply went with the community flow (I'd explain that to you but you Sunshiners just can't get your head around the idea of working WITH the Linux community). It also long pre-dates Sun's purchase of Lustre. Of course, I can guarantee hp will be moving off it very shortly seeing as now Sun have bought Lustre it is doomed. Sun's history shows there is no quicker way to kill a software product than for it to be bought by Sun.
As for benchmarks, I asked for recognised benchmarks for Niagara, the only ones you could provide were carefully crafted ones disowned by Oracle. Not much weight when you consider other vendors like IBM and hp post SPEC and TPC measures, and Oracle is happy to stand by their application benchmarks. But when I gave examples of our own investigations here you poo-pooed them, so pot meet keetle. So how did you exactly prove me wrong? Oh, I recall - because you whined for so long, that must make you right! Grow up.
Oh, and for the AC Sunshiner - the nova implosion is now down 6.01% on the day (16.48ET), still twice more than hp or IBM, and that puts the Sun market cap at $2.89bn. At that rate it could be three weeks and JAVA will breach the $1 shareprice, by which time the market cap will be under a $bn. Does anyone want to start a sweepstake on what point they think Ponytail will have the decency to finally fall on his sword? I'm going for the point at which JAVA gets delisted.
Just for the Sunshiners - Sun's JAVA ticker is down 4.21% so far today (16:44pm GMT), which is about three times what the other tech companies are showing, and the market cap is a paltry $2.94bn. IBM's market cap is $110.48bn, and hp's is $84.47bn. Even Netapp's market cap far exceeds Sun's at $4.39bn. Maybe IBM will look at integrating GPFS with WAFL, it would seem a better bet.....
"Matt Bryant, don't you have HP-UX boxes to sell instead of pouring dirt on the competition?..." I don't sell boxes, but I do enjoy ribbing you SUnshiners! What an easy target!
"....Solaris is now way ahead of AIX, HP-UX and even Linux on both pure performance and price/performance...." Now if only the customers believed that! Ignoring the obvious stupity of your statement, a review of market figures will soon show you that even giving Slowaris away free has had negligable effect on market share, and the ongoing decline in enterprise Slowaris still in a death-dive. Now, let's just assume for a moment not all those people buying AIX, hp-ux, Windows and Linux can't all be stupid (I know you SUnshiners like to think they all are), which leaves the only conclusion as they prefer AIX, hp-ux, Windows and Linux to Slowaris. Hint - this is one reason Sun's market cap os so low, it's because the analyst think the Sun product set has the characteristics of smelly brown stuff and is not likely to make any money....
RE: Bill - "Of course there's no announced support for HPUX...." Well, apart from the fact HP has a very long and established relationships with Veritas (the reason the AdvFS got dumped) and Oracle (number one Oracle RAC and grid partner) and so doesn't need GPFS, HP also have the PolyServe people and could probably produce a better UNIX grid product if need be.
RE: Andy White - "....Perhaps the install base is too loyal to Sun for it to be worth their while...." Really? So you haven't seen the marketting effort hp and IBM are putting into snagging disgruntled Sun customers? Or the desperation with which Sun switched from bashing SPARC64 to praising it when Rock fell off the roadmap? Sun have a big problem and it's that old SPARC customers, even though many are very loyal (a lot of them are Sunshiners), are being forced to move by the simple expedient of CIOs turning round and saying "No, we can't wait for Sun anymore, just buy hp/IBM/whatever!"
".... Perhaps the SPARC install base is happy 'chugging away' and doesn't want to move...." Well then you have just sounded Sun's deathknell. Apart from the fact that empirical data from the market shows they are migrating off SPARC onto other vendors' platforms, unless Sun can get a product to market to keep those old SPARC custoemrs onboard then Sun is dead, fullstop. They simply can't make enough money on the other products to survive, they need the old fattener of enterprise services. Neither Niagara or x64 will give them that, and their weak storage protfolio definately won't, especially whilst Sun continues to waste money on software deadends like MySQL.
"....Perhaps they like the guaranteed binary compatibility of Solaris...." I love that old chestnut - binary compatibility between what? You can't run a SPARC Solaris app on Solaris x86, which is the migration that I see discussed most. You can barely run a SPARC Solaris 9 app in a container on SPARC Solaris 10, and then you have to run it on the Niagara box you have the problem of running an old app with strong threading demands on a system that is designed for multiple mini threads - not good, hence the Sun bleating about Niagara as an Oracle system - comic! Or Sun have to give the money to FSC if you buy an M-series system, so Sun is simply treading water at best whilst desperately hoping on Rock. And who knows what the constraints there will be if you ever try running an old SPARC app on Rock (and don't tell me you know as Rock isn't out in the wild so the reality is you haven't a clue what could change between now and the date Rock gets out, if it ever does).
I speak to plenty of other admins and they tell me one of the biggest problems is the shaky Sun roadmap and the fact that Sun have lost mindshare in the boardroom. Sunshiners may like to make decisions based on nostalgia, but busineses rarley do, and I expect IBM have simply decided the effort of GPFS for Solaris is simply not worth the dwindling return.
You'd think all those old instances of Slowaris chugging away on the existing installed SPARC base would be a tempting target for IBM. Which implies IBM isn't having that hard a time enticing those customers over to AIX on Power or Linux on xSeries. Otherwise they'd be doing all they could to make the IBM hardware as attractive to them, like getting the Slowaris version of GPFS out the door ASAP.
Strung out scientist number 1: "Dude, I really need a hit, man, but I'm light."
SOSN2: "Don't stress, bro, we'll just start some craaaaazy project with some coke, and then we just cream off some of the samples..."
SOSN1: "What, like getting bees stoned?"
SONS2: "What have you been sniffing, homie!?!?!"
And the rest, as they say, is valued scientific research history...
The FAA are mainly tasked in the current world with support for ground forces involved in UN/NATO "policing" actions. The Falklands and Bosnia showed the FAA have fallen far behind the RAF Harrier pilots when it came to ground-attack operations, so maybe a spell under RAF control would do them good. In the meantime, passing on the cost of the F-35B would free up money to make the carriers nucleur and give them a steam catapault and maybe some extra defensive toys. Then the RAF can have the hassle of providing F-35Cs or navalised Typhoons (a navalised Tranche 1 would fulfill the naval interceptor role very well, and get the RAF some Tranche 3 models to replace them) to serve on them, both of which would seem better options than the F-35B. And with RAF-trained pilots they'd actually be able to give some assistance to our troops.
/That should put Lewis in a spin!
Please go ahead, you'll get in no end of trouble, but then I suspect you're the kind of waster with plenty of time on your hands. Believe me, the Police have more than enough serious crime to deal with wihtout morons like you, do you think the coppers actually want to be out on demos arresting well-meaning-but-incureably-stupid people like you? They have much better ways to spend their time, namely investigating and preventing crimes that affect the public, rather than wasting time on you and whatever pet griveance you and your trendy mates have decided to support this week. If you want to make a real difference why don't you volunteer to be a Special Constable and seeing what it is like, but then I doubt you'd have the mental capabilities to get in.
Well, if it's anything like the EFI that goes into Itanium, then it also includes a boot loader which allows you to very easily switch between OSs. It also keeps the OS at arms length from the hardware more than the old BIOS did, which means low level virtualisation will be easier. The big difference is the old EFI was very much CLI and very small, whereas this looks like it has masses of graphics content and will subsequently take longer to load.
Instead of what looks like a very big and heavy laptop, can I have an ordinary size one where the keyboard/mouse touchpad are a second touchscreen, like a DS Lite. Then I can switch between using the keyboard screen as a screen or a keyboard, or a drawing input device. I could even stand it on the edge and do a double screen presentation, or watch a movie on one screen whilst messenger and email ran in the other. Apologies if someone has already made one of these and I missed it.
When they announced Vista I said give it at least a year and then look at it after the bleeding edge users have suffered the pain and found all the bugs. Well, several friends ignored the advice and I had to help them downgrade to XP. Now, however, I have several friends that run and like Vista, especially the Ultimate version. The occurence of driver issues seems to have dropped right off, and it does seem at least as stable as XP. Having said that, I see no reason to upgrade my home systems from XP yet, it simply doesn't give me anything new. And don't get me started on the awful FUBAR of Office 2007 - the ultimate "change-for-change's-sake" bloatware!
At work though, I was sorely tempted by a single feature - power efficiency. We have some well-specced "workstation" laptops, they boot quickly to login, but after login we have an age whilst assorted security and other standard build junk loads. To get round this, it is common for many of us to hibernate the laptop rather than power them right off. With XP, this kills the battery in less than a day, but some test units with Vista will go three days in hibernation! I have no idea how Vista does it, it's just much better at power management. And our laptop build for Vista is stable. There's some testing to do, but I'm actually tempted to go with Vista on my work laptop.
Of course, I'll be keeping it dual-boot with Linux.... But then I've noticed for years that Linux is happilly falling into the Vista trap, and each release needs more and more resources. Sure, I can still roll my own or get a minimalist version, but if I want to match the capability of Windoze then the Linux system is now not so far behind the M$ in requirements. Yes, the releases are much more user-friendly, but Linux is also creeping up the requirements ladder, and it won't be long before a system that runs XP Pro won't be powerful enough for Ubuntu with all the bells and whistles. I worry that M$ might pull a fast one and actually release Windows 7 with less of a hardware requirement than the major Linux desktops.
I would have to agree with Simon B on the Norton point - completely awful bloatware product that actually failed to catch the one major virus we had. TBH, I think being bought up by Symantec was the worst thing that could have happened to Veritas, but thankfully the core of the good software was written before Symantec got in there. I always liked the old Storage Central product, especially for the NT quotas and screening out all those unwanted user MP3 files ("What, you transferred your whole iTunes library to a work server and it disappeared? Tough!"). I usually check if the Symantec person I'm talking to is Symantec Veritas or pre-Symantec Veritas - there is a big difference! Same goes with the products.
"That'll be the Fairey Fulmar that had the best kill ratio of any RN fighter of World War two then? No seriously it did, out-turned the Me-109 and had about twice as much ammo per gun of any other WW2 Fighter...." The Fulmar was mainly used for CAM ships and escorts where it was unlikely to meet modern fighters, excpet in the Med where there was little choice. The majority of Fulmar kills were the long-range patrol bombers like the FW200 Condor (a comverted airliner teh Fulamr could barely catch) and flyingboats, not other fighters. Yes, it could out-turn an ME109 at low speed and low level, but the ME could out-climb, out-dive and out-roll it, which meant the Fulmar could do little except go defensive and hope the ME buggered off through low fuel levels. A simple measure of it's usefullness would be to give the same FAA pilot facing the ME a choice of a Fulmar or the Sea Hurricane or Martlet. The pilots' accounts I have read all state how happy they were to get the Sea Hurri and leave the Fulmar. The figures I have read also put the Martlet as the most succesful FAA fighter, but then that might be because they compared it to other singleseaters rather than the Fulmar.
No, you don't need cartridges. There are kits out there with PC software that let you rip the game from a cartridge and then put it on an SD micro card. As part of the kit you get a "cartridge" with an SD card slot. Because of the space on the SD card you can pack dozens of games onto a single SD card and therefore not have to carry around dozens of easily lost game cartridges. It is not illegal to sell the SD card or the adapter "cartridge", you will find many hits for such devices on the web (hint - there's a whole Wiki on DS storage.....).
A friend (alledgedly, hypothetically, etc., etc.) got a pair of the old N-card devices for his kids after they lost a dozen cartdiges when they took their DS Lites on holiday. Now he has superglued the N-cards to their DS Lites and if the SD card one holds is lost, he can simply download all the games onto a new SD card and not have to go buy all the games again. Please note (Mr ELSPA) that he has purchased all the games involved and not downloaded or copied any he has not paid for.
As I understand it (and IANAL), it is the end user who makes the decision whether or not they break a game's EULA by copying it. Which means the vendor is probably not guilty unless his advert expressly encouraged buyers to break the law, which is highly likely in this case otherwise he wouldn't have sold many.
I sometimes wonder if this isn't the old car industry kicking back with a little FUD. They did the same when the first plastic bodyparts appeared in cars, claiming that plastic would burn too easily and make a plastic car a deathtrap. In the meantime, the Th!nk is probably safer than a motorcycle, and probably better than some of the pre-NCAP cars still trundling round on UK roads. If you think that's innaccurate, consider that I - like many others - used to drive original Minis (including one that had a plastic nose and everything in front of the engine cut back to lighten it, so effectively lethal in a head-on collission). I still see plenty of old Minis, Mk1 Fiestas and the like around, and they're probably no better in a crash.
And then I have read that despite the rise of safety features in cars the accident rates have not gone down, in fact they seem to have led to a belief that car crashes are now survivable with little more than a bruise, leading to even more poor driving behaviour. I wonder if so many people would tailgate if they were in a car without features like crumple zones, and knew a crash was likely to lose them their legs? Maybe that's how we should deal with speeders - have them sentenced to a Th!nk for a year or two!
Personally, I think everyone that wants to drive in Britain should be made to learn in an old Mini in London - if you can survive that then you're probably fit to drive anywhere!
I thought the main cause of the USS Vincennes Airbus disaster was having an overly-aggressive fleshie in charge, not a possibly insecure or ineffective computerised fire control system? As I recall, the Aegis fire control system did its job right to spec., it was the fleshies reading the situation that got it wrong, mainly due to poor processes and an aggressive mindset probably partially brought about by the attack on USS Stark the year before, where 37 US sailors died becasue they didn't react when attacked by an Iraqi Mirage.
In the meantime, I'm staggered by ANYTHING being installed by the MoD in only eighteen days! And BAe saving money with an off-the-shelf purchase - what a scary precedent! Next you'll be telling me it didn't require 200+ civil servants to support the purchase.....
Hmmmm.... how about cars?
Linux is easy - kit cars! A surprisingly big bizz in the UK, you can either spend the minimum and build your own budget racer, or splash out serious money for a pre-built kit not far off a real racing machine. And of course, you can actually match the performance of even quite exotic and very pricey sportscars for a lot less money, though the interface is probably a little less refined.
Microsoft Windows is just about any mid-range car producer, making the typical family hatch, the MPV, the business van, maybe an SUV, and the odd supercar for "special" customers. Ford is good fit, though Bill would probably prefer to be compared to BMW (the overweight and over-priced X5 is a pretty good match for Vista).
And old school Mac users were scooterists. They'd wobble around on their Vespas, happilly telling all thier odd little machines were better than cars and oh-so-chic! Of course, nowadays they are Smart car owners - still just as smug, just as stupid, and just as ripped off.
And as a final insult - "....eating just one Belgian truffle could turn you into a Mac fanboy, or indeed girl..." - is there a difference between them when it comes to Mac users?
Face it, everyone is happilly saving themselves into a recession, not many people are spalshing out on killer home systems, so having a budget part that still offers excellent perfromance for 95% of home users is a good thing, and if it uses up otherwise defunct chips then it saves money for AMD as well. If I was AMD, my worry would be that this may take sales from the newer CPUs as cash-strapped punters look for a bargain option
Oh, go on, don't hold back! Well, IBM do manage to sell a few of those pesky DS8000 into enterprise enviornments, so I suppose it fits the "enterprise" moniker, but I'd have to agree with it being behind the field. I also agree that HP have been late getting SSDs to market compared to EMC, but then again I still think the whole SSD thing in the enterprise is still getting there rather than being the norm. But EMC definately got some mindshare by looking proactive, and I still haven't seen SSDs in the EVA range yet which is where I'd want them.
No, but the whole Eurofighter concept suffers from the usual joint project problem - the Europeans - whereas SAAB had one customer to please and didn't have to waste billions on paying off fat eurocats. Also, the Grypen is a much lighter interceptor and is arguably no better than the original BAe P.106 design the RAF rejected as being too puny to fulfill the role that Typhoon now must. In fact, the closest any off-the-shelf design got to the RAF requirement was the F/A-18, which is no real surprise as the F/A-18 is designed to fulfill the oversea fighter and strike role of the old Phantom, the last real multi-role all-in-one fighter the RAF had. The original RAF requirement can be simplified to a modern, cheaper-to-run and more capable Phantom replacement, something the Tornado has not been able to quite do.
The thing is BAe has shown before with projects like the Hawk what can be accomplished when just left to get on with doing a job. Compare the Hawk program, which is probably the most succesful advanced jet trainer program around, with competitiors like the Alpha Jet, the project BAe luckily opted out of as it saw what a mess the French and Germans were making of it. The bigger, more costly Hawk has outsold the Alpha more than two-to-one, and is still in production and development whereas Alpha production has long since ceased. BAe is, despite what the loons like to think, not full of stupid people.
Or the MBT80 program, another euromess involving the usual culprits, France and Germany. The failure of that program after several years and nobody knows how many millions eventually forced the UK to go with Challenger, a design originally (and conveniently?) drawn up by BAe for the Iranians. Luckily this wasn't such a bad thing, though the fire control system was too slow, and it went on to score 300+ kills for no losses in the First Gulf War (not even the Abrams matched that ratio). The much criticised fire control system also got the Challenger a place in the history books with the longest range kill tank-versus-tank kill on record (5.1km using HESH). Not bad for a "clearance bargain" desing. Finally, the Army got what it really wanted in the all-British Challenger 2, which was selected over the other decendents from the failed MBT80 program, the Leopard 2 and the truly awful Le Clerc.
So it seems that BAe are quite good at judging the armoured European failures. They foresaw the problems in MBT80, and they guessed the multi-national SP70 project was going to fail and came up with the much better AS-90 self-propelled howitzer in their spare time. They also got Hawk not just right but very right, to the tune of an awful lot of foreign orders. However, it must have been glaringly obvious to the same BAe people that the Eurofighter requirement was going to have to fit too many different national requirements.
As soon as you introduce any of our European partners to a project, let alone the catastrophe of letting Dassault in, the costs go up in quadratic amounts as the design is bastardised to suit everyones' needs, and everyone feels they have to make changes or insist on different capability if only for reasons of national pride. BAe know this, which begs the question did they happily sign off on Tranche 1 knowing full well the RAF would have to come back for either massive post-sale upgrades or additional upgraded jets? Just how much money did BAe really drag out of the MoD and the Europeans to join in the Eurofighter party, and how much have they been promised for fixing the resulting mess for the RAF?
Ah, so you haven't seen the death-by-Powerpoint HP presentation on the coming 8Gb SAN versions, then? Whatever, you, don't admit so to your HP rep - it's deadly! But the new 8Gb VC bits are Brocade-based.
Looking back at the article, the only evidence offered is CISCO say they would "consider" such a move, and have prevuiously moved into storage networking. Well, the statement means nothing, it doesn't even say they have a design group looking at the idea. And the storage networking was a natural outgrowth of the core networking buisiness to try and outflank CISCO's main competitor, Brocade. Adding SAN switches to a netwrok range is a lot smaller leap than going into blade servers.
Seriously, though, what are CISCO going to do, design a complete set of blades from scratch to fit into the chassis used by their Director switches, or use a thrid-party reference design? If it's the former, can the slots supply the power to run something like a four-socket Xeon blade? If they go for the latter approach, who? Maybe IBM will licence them their design, at least it's a respectable design, but how will they then compete against IBM when IBM can undercut them and offer a wider range of products, management technology and services to sweeten the deal? And a design from anyone else would risk being too far behind technically to stand up to blades from HP, IBM or Dell. I'm not sure what the options are for simply making a blade to plug into someone else's chassis (I beleive IBM will licence this?), but how will that face up against a well-rounded package from the big three?
Can CISCO partner with someone (Sunshiners, don't get excited, even CISCO aren't dumb enough to want to touch Sun)? And then if they do design new blades from scratch they still have to go build up the services back-end for Windows, Linux and (throw the Sunshiners a bone) even Solaris, which I don't think their current services teams can cover, plus create either a new channel or a new server sales team. All in the face of an economic down-turn?
To be honest, when CISCO quit throwing their toys out of the pram they may decide the whole idea is a bit too much of a leap to make in the current economic climate.
A scary warning of how fashionable netbooks are becoming. One of our (how do I put it nicely?) less-than-tech-savvy salebods wandered in and innocently asked if the Acer Aspire One was included on our list of approved laptops. A quick interrogation later brought the horrific news - salespeople are reading The Reg!!! Can't the Reg block them, maybe distract them with a pic of a shiny Bimmer?
SHUSH!!! Throwing flamer comments at the fanbois on /. is almost as much fun as winding up the Sunshiners here!
Anyhooooo. Will I use Amarok - no. Not because I don't think it's a good bit of work, but becasue I have other tools that do the job for me. But what really cheers me is the amount and quality of a lot of the Linux apps like Amarok popping out all over the Web. Ten years ago there were a few forums (including /.) which, if you read, you could be pretty sure of staying about 99% up to date with Linux development. Yes, Amarok is over-engineered and could be described as bloatware, but so could 90% of Windows or Mac apps. It's a sign of the growth of the Linux arena and its wider appeal that apps like Amarok get air-time on sits like The Reg, and that will REALLY wind up the Sunshiners and Mactards!
Well, it's no surprise you post as AC, I've realised now that what you actually must be objecting to is my dissing the Sunray product in my original post - you Sunshiners just can't sit still if someone says anything not to your liking about anything Sun. No wonder you can't supply a technical response about VMware View, you work with Slowaris! You have no experience of working outside of your narrow productset. What a surprise - not! If anyone is acting like a fourteen-year-old (or younger, I woudln't want to insult 14-year-olds) it is you Sunshiners and your kneejerk insultive reflex to anyone that you disagree with. No doubt you'll deny the complete lack of penetration of Sunray into anywhere other than Sun's own buildings? Want to compare market figures against even Mac desktops?
I suggest you try a product outside your tiny remit, you'll be surprised. It may even enhance your employability as Sun slides off the map. I would recommend VMware ESX as a starter as you'll find there is much more call for it in the real world than there is for Slowaris or Sunray skills. Of course, you'll have to learn a modern, popular, x64 OS to be homed on the ESX, so best forget Slowaris and learn some Linux or Windoze. Now that should have you choking up with froth!
/Chuckle, chuckle, chuckle!
So who was surprised, especially given the economic downturn? But then I always thought Sun was aiming at the wrong target (enterprise customers) with a lot of their rent-a-cloud effort. Their one real differentiator, the one area where Niagara could really shine is webserving, especially for largely static webpages like about 90% of those on the Worldwide Web, so how come it's not cleaning up with the hosting companies? Lack of vision at the top, or lack of delivery further down the order?
Now, every time Sun go into a customer to talk grid or mini-cloud opportunities, they will get slapped by the IBM, Dell and HP salesgrunts with the line "Did you know what happened to the Sun cloud effort - it died because it wasn't fit for the market, and now Sun are trying to sell you the same wrong tech in a smaller package, do you really want that?"
As for hosting Linux on Slowaris - why? As an example, RHEL has built-in Xen and yet many customers still chose to pay for the rock-solid VMware ESX offerings to host RHEL. Why should they go to the added trouble of running another complete OS just for virtualisation just because it's free? And even if they do take the free part, unless they buy a Sun support contract Sun wil make less than zero on the deal. That's not a lack of vision, that's myopic optimism replacing the ability to gauge what the market actually wants.
/Getting beyond the laughing stage.
Whilst HP's approach is applaudable, this is not the case of the wise, pragmatic tortoise, but more of the experienced hare that got kicked in the family tiara jewels, and has learned from the experience that sometimes it's better to jog rather than sprint. HP originally did have a very futuristic, ahead-of-the-market, big-bang datacenter product that was a complete computing-as-a-service offering, that could be built by a customer to convert their whole infrastructure in one go to a billable model using smart servers, storage and software. It was the HP Utility Data Center and it even worked!
The problem was, apart from three big customers, everyone else couldn't afford to rip out all their old datacenters and replace them overnight with shiney new ones, they wanted a phased approach (Ashlee Vance wrote about its demise here http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/30/hp_kills_udc/). So HP canned the offering, remembered how it had originally found success with the OpenView products, and broke the Utiltiy Data Center up into standalone modules and services. Those bits sold well, and HP haven't forgotten the lesson. Business usually transitions slowly to new ideas, it takes legislation (e.g., Sarbanes-Oxley for retention) or a dramatic turn in World economic events (9/11 for DR) to force the pace of change to pick up, and HP have decided the current downturn isn't sharp enough (yet) to force the wholesale adoption of rent-a-cloud services.
Long may the hare limp!
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