Posts by JacobZ 76 posts • joined 26 Nov 2014
Not that complicated. A big chunk of the revenue in the Systems business is driven by z (mainframe) sales. Whenever a new z machine is released there is a massive spike in revenue as buyers rush to the new machine. The following quarter there is typically a smaller but still significant spike in mainframe-attached storage. And as that machine generation ages, demand declines... until the next release and the next spike.
So if you want to understand what is happening in the rest of the Systems business - primarily Storage and Power - you need to factor out the extremely cyclical z impact.
If the author is American, "could care less" is exactly what they meant. The phrase has a universally understood meaning in American English that decades ago diverged from the literal meaning of the words taken out of this context. "Understanding what the phrase should really mean".
Fun fact: I have a list of things called "More Wrong", where the people correcting others are actually incorrect. This is on the list
Um, actually... "the hoi polloi" is correct English.
Yes, "hoi polloi" means "the people" in Greek. However, we are not speaking Greek, and the phrase "hoi polloi" has been thoroughly assimilated into English entirely independently of the grammar of its Greek source. And "hoi" does not mean "the" in English. Hence, "the hoi polloi". That's how languages work.
For the same reason, the plural of "octopus" is "octopuses" and not "octopodes".
Fun fact: it's a common misconception that "prove" in "the exception proves the rule" really means test.
The original, original meaning comes from lawyers, in particular the Latin phrase "exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis" - the last part meaning "in cases not excepted". When a sign says something like "Parking is allowed between midnight and 5am", this exception "proves" that there is a general rule against parking there; otherwise, why would there be a need to state the exception?
There, isn't that fun?
Is anybody genuinely surprised that the big are getting bigger? The cloud business is ideally suited to favor economies of scale. And like enterprise software business in the days of on-prem software, it's almost inevitable that you'll get 3 (in this case 4 because of geography and geopolitics) big winners and a host of distantly-trailing niche vendors. Look at the evolution of the markets for relational databases, Linux distros, application servers, ERP/CRM suites, and any number of other software markets...
:=)
That's assuming they are using the formal definition of EB as decimal quantities. If they are using the technically incorrect but widely adopted practice of using EB, PB and TB as binary quantities then 1 EB = 1024 PB etc. Once you get up to PBs and EBs it starts to make a material difference...
There was a court case in the US some years ago regarding consumer storage that established that when the packaging said "MB", buyers had a reasonable expectation that this meant 1024 GBs (and so on down).
...or they might be wanting this data so that they can comply with Federal law that requires them to collect it, and so that they can verify they aren't discriminating *against* anybody.
No brownie points or imaginary preferential hiring required to explain it.
But it's fascinating how easily trigged the "anti-PC" crowd are by anything that challenges their privilege.
That was the first system I worked on professionally, close to 40 years ago. I was an apprentice programmer at Satchwell Control Systems writing very bad code for a building management system. We developed under ISIS and cross-compiled to RMX, if memory serves.
The offices were in Slough, just on the fringe of the famous Slough Trading Estate, and at the time we were a subsidiary of GEC.
I remember a lot of excitement about the potential for MAID about three years ago, but then everything seemed to go quiet. As I recall, one of the concerns was that repeatedly powering drives up and down would shorten their lives significantly.
Since Microsoft is talking about this publicly again, I assume something significant has changed. Perhaps what they asked of the drive manufacturers was disks that can sustain the power cycling better?
The EAC is a pretty fascinating example. Although it started out as a trading company, and was certainly a very large corporation in every formal sense, before long it was hard to tell the difference between it and a country in its own right. It controlled a huge amount of trade, established rule in India (laying the foundation for the British Raj), and even fought wars with its French counterpart. Real wars, I mean, not just trade wars.
From Wiki: "By 1803, at the height of its rule in India, the British East India company had a private army of about 260,000—twice the size of the British Army. The company eventually came to rule large areas of India with its private armies, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions."
There are probably fascinating parallels to be drawn between the EAC and companies such as Facebook or Google, but I leave that as an exercise for people smarter than I.
And: ThoughtWorks is proof that you can have a company full of smart, curious people who deliver really good stuff without being assholes.
I once had the privilege of delivering a lunch-and-learn session at their Chicago office, with Martin in the audience. Probably the most intimidating audience I ever presented in front of, even without him -- I spent the whole time up there thinking "is there anything I can tell them they don't already know?".
some people clearly like something about vinyl (handling discs? bigger artwork?) enough to cause a revival.
I do think this is part of the story: the rituals and practices heighten the anticipation of the moment. The fact that many of the rituals are tactile (e.g. the special way they wipe the dust, the care with which they lower the arm) is important. Regardless of what it may (or may not) objectively do to the music reproduction, it really can change some people's subjective enjoyment. (Compare: tea-making rituals).
And then behind that is the opportunity for geekery: to know more than the average person about selecting and matching components for the "best" reproduction, to read endless magazine articles about the specs of the latest equipment, agonizing over whether to upgrade now or hold out for better: for many of this type, the equipment is more important than the music.
And third, there's the lure of exclusivity and collectability: vinyl, especially older vinyl, is a physical artifact that exists in finite quantities and is found in physical locations. The search for a rare copy in good condition of a particular edition can itself be rewarding in a way that finding an MP3 online really is not.
And to be honest, I have no problem with people who enjoy vinyl in any of those ways, so long as they don't insist that their end result "must" be better than mine and that I'm doing it wrong by listening to MP3s on a tiny SanDisk through ear buds to drown out the noise of the lawn mower.
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