Isn't this a Contradiction in Terms? IBM Dishes Out Small, Low-Power Supercomputer

[Watson A.Name - Watt Sun, Dark Remover]

Thank you BillG for that wonderful Windows Registry idea.

An OS should only have to be restarted after a kernel recompile.

BTW, one other thing. Our mainframe used to have a prog called simon
(systen integrity monitor?) that was run periodically at times to
check the hardware. Among other things, IIRC, it did some barberpole
tests to memory with the supply voltage changed a few percent to a
higher and lower value. MS-DOS used to have EMM386 or some prog that
did memory tests during bootup, but I don't know how it's done with
the different windoze OSes. But the hardware does need an occasional
check. If it can't be done during regular operation, then the OS
should be shut down and the hardware checked for integrity.

http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html

The Rules of Operating System Design
1) Applications must not crash the operating system.
2) APPLICATIONS MUST NOT CRASH THE OPERATING SYSTEM.

--
@@F@r@o@m@@O@r@a@n@g@e@@C@o@u@n@t@y@,@@C@a@l@,@@w@h@e@r@e@@
###Got a Question about ELECTRONICS? Check HERE First:###
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My email address is whitelisted. *All* email sent to it
goes directly to the trash unless you add NOSPAM in the
Subject: line with other stuff. alondra101 <at> hotmail.com
Don't be ripped off by the big book dealers. Go to the URL
that will give you a choice and save you money(up to half).
http://www.everybookstore.com You'll be glad you did!
Just when you thought you had all this figured out, the gov't
changed it: http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html
@@t@h@e@@a@f@f@l@u@e@n@t@@m@e@e@t@@t@h@e@@E@f@f@l@u@e@n@t@@

 

[Adrian]

Greg Pierce wrote:
[snip]

BTW, the uptimes numbers listed in this site are DAYS, not hours. Thus,
the top runner has (supposedly; usually systems are updated at least
once a year in a typical environment) 1688 DAYS of uptime.

I personally know the administrator a Tucson Newspapers, holder of
positions 6 and 7 (actually both the same box), and have personally
"laid hands" on treefort.org. It has been up for more than 3 years,
running continously and was a semi-publicly available box for
designing/running CGI scripts (for any subscriber at the now defunct
AzStarnet ISP). It has been updated several times, that does not mean it
needs to be rebooted and hasn't been. Note that Apache was updated at
one point, but backdated because a few scripts had problems.

To date, the biggest problem keeping the box up (it's in a
switch/telecom closet) is when the power supply in a Packard Bell next
to it burst into flames last year. Nearly had to pull the power! What a
shame that would have been.

[snip]

BTW, here is the info on my system:

Note bad, here's one of my boxes that monitors a couple dozen switches
and routers, updating ~8000 measurements every 5 minutes.

[root@watchdog root]# uname -a
Linux watchdog 2.4.18-3 #1 Thu Apr 18 07:37:53 EDT 2002 i686 unknown
[root@watchdog root]# uptime
5:30am up 145 days, 12:55, 1 user, load average: 1.47, 0.65, 0.49


Adrian

 

[Paul Burridge]

LOL! Ya know, ever since I went to W2000 I've gone from seldom seeing
(weell, okay, occasional) an NT BSOD to almost never. I only have to
reboot at work to reload the virus def files from our server. I leave
it on 24/7 otherwise.

Certainly after Service Pack 4 the thing seems to be almost useable.
It's still a crock of sh*t of course, just a much more stable one.
BTW, isn't it ludicrous that we have to periodically install these
patches 'on the wing' as it were? Any *other* company in the world
would fully develop and de-bug a product *before* releasing it. What a
bunch of piss-taking jerks M$ are. :-(
This is what happens when you allow a virtual monopoly situation to
arise, I'm afraid.

 

[Paul Burridge]

I'm convinced the whole thing is Karma.

In my garage are two bikes. A 1981 Yamaha Maxim 650, always babied, which
there is ALWAYS something wrong with it, hard to start, runs bad. It's
supposed to be a good bike... the oil pan is off of it now. Then there is a
1971 Suzuki RV 90J (little 90cc dirt bike, big wide tires, 2-cycle rotary
valve intake) and it has so far not required any major engine servicing.
ANY! And it's been abused, very very abused... been through other
consumables though, 2 chains, 2 rear sprockets, 2 pairs of rear shocks, new
seat, 2 new tires, new front fender... yet it starts on the first kick, even
after sitting in a corner for a year. Now *that* is Karma. Both bikes are
made from the same kind of metals and plastics, but one has clearly worked
much better over the years than the other, and under much harsher
conditions. Is it manufacturing, materials, or Karma?

How can it be Karma? If it were, it would not discriminate between the
bikes. They'd either *both* be crap, middling, or wonderful depending
on how many bugs you've stepped on or squished in your life.
I used to believe my computers were possessed because they were so
trouble. Evenually I found out the problem was basically down to the
Windows (spit!) "operating system." All the time I used command line
systems I never had any problem. All my grief began with Win 3.1.
Should have realised it before, I suppose, but the MS marketing
machine is soooo convincing.

 

[Watson A.Name - Watt Sun, Dark Remover]

3) DATA IS NOT INSTRUCTIONS.

Yeah, well that, too. Reminds me of the minicomputer that we had for
student assembler classes. They would screw up in their programs and
the processor would overwrite some area of the OS. So the OS would
crash, and jump to a location in memory and halt. The front panel
would display that hexadecimal location: DEAD

But shouldn't that be data ARE not instructions? ;-)

John

--
@@F@r@o@m@@O@r@a@n@g@e@@C@o@u@n@t@y@,@@C@a@l@,@@w@h@e@r@e@@
###Got a Question about ELECTRONICS? Check HERE First:###
http://users.pandora.be/educypedia/electronics/databank.htm
My email address is whitelisted. *All* email sent to it
goes directly to the trash unless you add NOSPAM in the
Subject: line with other stuff. alondra101 <at> hotmail.com
Don't be ripped off by the big book dealers. Go to the URL
that will give you a choice and save you money(up to half).
http://www.everybookstore.com You'll be glad you did!
Just when you thought you had all this figured out, the gov't
changed it: http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html
@@t@h@e@@a@f@f@l@u@e@n@t@@m@e@e@t@@t@h@e@@E@f@f@l@u@e@n@t@@

 

[Watson A.Name - Watt Sun, Dark Remover]

[snip]

Yes, my system has been up for 46 days, 8 hours and 51 minutes. The last
reboot was due to a kernel upgrade.

And there lies the rub. All those long unbooted systems could be
guilty of being neglected or unattended, or admins have been negligent
in proper OS maintenance/upgrades.

Now watch all the feathers fly, as *nix defenders try to whittle what
I've said down to matchsticks. I didn't say that the above was bad;
if the box is doing its job, then no sense in fixin' what ain't
broken. But just the increasing demand for services should put those
archaic boxes out to salvage and get them replaced with a more
powerful box. Unless, of course, you have acres of rack space. ;-)


--
@@F@r@o@m@@O@r@a@n@g@e@@C@o@u@n@t@y@,@@C@a@l@,@@w@h@e@r@e@@
###Got a Question about ELECTRONICS? Check HERE First:###
http://users.pandora.be/educypedia/electronics/databank.htm
My email address is whitelisted. *All* email sent to it
goes directly to the trash unless you add NOSPAM in the
Subject: line with other stuff. alondra101 <at> hotmail.com
Don't be ripped off by the big book dealers. Go to the URL
that will give you a choice and save you money(up to half).
http://www.everybookstore.com You'll be glad you did!
Just when you thought you had all this figured out, the gov't
changed it: http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html
@@t@h@e@@a@f@f@l@u@e@n@t@@m@e@e@t@@t@h@e@@E@f@f@l@u@e@n@t@@

 

[Chuck Harris]

Hey Watson!

What you don't understand is all us guys with *nix boxes can do our
upgrades without rebooting the OS. The only time we have to reboot
is when we change the kernel, which is about once a year.

My Linux box has taken on hundreds of megabytes of upgrades this year
without rebooting. The only time I had to reboot, due to an operating
system issue, was when I upped my kernel to the latest rev.

This is not to say my machine hasn't been taken down, it has, but that
has been due to hardware changes, and power outages that exceed my UPS's
ability by several days.

When was the last time you did a Window's upgrade, of any sort, that
didn't require you to reboot several times to make it stick?

-Chuck

[snip]

Yes, my system has been up for 46 days, 8 hours and 51 minutes. The last
reboot was due to a kernel upgrade.

And there lies the rub. All those long unbooted systems could be
guilty of being neglected or unattended, or admins have been negligent
in proper OS maintenance/upgrades.

Now watch all the feathers fly, as *nix defenders try to whittle what
I've said down to matchsticks. I didn't say that the above was bad;
if the box is doing its job, then no sense in fixin' what ain't
broken. But just the increasing demand for services should put those
archaic boxes out to salvage and get them replaced with a more
powerful box. Unless, of course, you have acres of rack space. ;-)

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Watson A. Name - Watt Sun, Dark
ews.dslextreme.com>) about 'Isn't this a Contradiction in Terms? IBM
Dishes Out Small, Low-Power Supercomputer', on Sun, 16 Nov 2003:

The most problems I have with W98SE are when I try to run Acrobat
Reader. Sometimes it freezes, and task mgr says not responding. So I
end the task, restart it and it seems okay. For awhile anyway..

Yes, I find Acrobat (5.0.5) to be troublesome. It grabs huge chunks of
memory for no reason, screws up the icons on the desktop (replacing the
little arrow on short-cut icons with something indecipherable) and
generally shows instability.

I've heard that the latest version is no better, which is why I haven't
upgraded.

 

[Adrian]

Chuck Harris wrote:
[snip]

When was the last time you did a Window's upgrade, of any sort, that
didn't require you to reboot several times to make it stick?

Heck, when was the last time you installed an app more than 5MB in size
on a windows box that didn't require a reboot?

[snip]
We all know it take a dual 2G Xeons to run DNS with a Windows box. Any
properly configured 200Mhz *nix box can do the same and DHCP for 10,000
users to boot. Why upgrade that "archaic" boxes when its doing the job
more than adequately.

Adrian

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Watson A. Name - Watt Sun, Dark
ews.dslextreme.com>) about 'Isn't this a Contradiction in Terms? IBM
Dishes Out Small, Low-Power Supercomputer', on Sun, 16 Nov 2003:

MS-DOS used to have EMM386 or some prog that did memory
tests during bootup, but I don't know how it's done with the different
windoze OSes.

With Win98SE, the memory check is still done in DOS before Windoze is
booted, AIUI.

But Norton System Doctor, or one of its competitors, does all the checks
rather better anyway.

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Watson A. Name - Watt Sun, Dark
ews.dslextreme.com>) about 'Isn't this a Contradiction in Terms? IBM
Dishes Out Small, Low-Power Supercomputer', on Sat, 15 Nov 2003:

Isn't this a Contradiction in Terms?
IBM Dishes Out Small, Low-Power Supercomputer

No; it appears to be an oxymoron (figure of speech involving an apparent
contrast), but oxymorons don't have to be false statements.

No doubt the product is smaller, and less power-hungry, than yer
averridge supercomputer.

 

[Fred Abse]

And consume the entire world's communication capacity spewing Swen virus.

It'd never happen. Nobody could afford the license

 

[Fred Abse]

That's a good one John! I would say the 99% of the BSOD's I get with MS
products are due to the OS trying to execute data space. There is really
no excuse for that in the 21st century.

There never WAS an excuse for it. If programmers were made to learn
assembly language and something about hardware before they were allowed to
get their heads so far up their object-oriented asses that they forget
totally about the physical system it's all supposed to run on, it
probably would happen a lot less

..

(thankfully I run linux 99.9% of the time now days.)

100% here. never looked back.

 

[Jim Thompson]

On Sun, 16 Nov 2003 15:43:39 +0000, John Woodgate

[snip]

I find Acrobat (5.0.5) to be troublesome. It grabs huge chunks of
memory for no reason, screws up the icons on the desktop (replacing the
little arrow on short-cut icons with something indecipherable) and
generally shows instability.

I've heard that the latest version is no better, which is why I haven't
upgraded.

Same here. I relegated Acrobat v5.0.5 to the back burner, in case I
receive something I can't read, and went back to Acrobat v4.05a as the
PDF tool of choice.

I don't know why some of these software shops can't leave a good thing
alone and instead develop a new product. Adobe just has to keep
adding bloat until they destroy Acrobat.

And I see JASC doing the same thing to Paint Shop Pro :-(

I tend to stick to a good thing, so I'm still using Eudora Pro v3.0.5
as my E-mailer ;-)

...Jim Thompson

 

[Watson A.Name - Watt Sun, Dark Remover]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Watson A. Name - Watt Sun, Dark
ews.dslextreme.com>) about 'Isn't this a Contradiction in Terms? IBM
Dishes Out Small, Low-Power Supercomputer', on Sun, 16 Nov 2003:


Yes, I find Acrobat (5.0.5) to be troublesome. It grabs huge chunks of
memory for no reason, screws up the icons on the desktop (replacing the
little arrow on short-cut icons with something indecipherable) and
generally shows instability.

I've heard that the latest version is no better, which is why I haven't
upgraded.

I was POed at the 6.0 reader. The damn thing wouldn't install until
W2000 had SP2 installed. Not only that, but I believe they are trying
to squeeze more out of the users by making it do "features" that you
have to go to their weebsite and pay for. Some features. >:-(

I suggest you keep a copy of 5.0 whatever the latest was, and burn it
to CD-R for future installation. Adobe no longer has it on their site
(I couldn't find it), and I had to find it at some Russian site or
whatever. It's named something like AR505EN.exe (?). Get it before
it becomes extinct. Most documents can still be read with AR 4.0, so
I don't think that 5.0 will become obsolete for quite awhile.
Especially if Adobe keeps on squeezing the users of AR 6.0 for more
money.


--
@@F@r@o@m@@O@r@a@n@g@e@@C@o@u@n@t@y@,@@C@a@l@,@@w@h@e@r@e@@
###Got a Question about ELECTRONICS? Check HERE First:###
http://users.pandora.be/educypedia/electronics/databank.htm
My email address is whitelisted. *All* email sent to it
goes directly to the trash unless you add NOSPAM in the
Subject: line with other stuff. alondra101 <at> hotmail.com
Don't be ripped off by the big book dealers. Go to the URL
that will give you a choice and save you money(up to half).
http://www.everybookstore.com You'll be glad you did!
Just when you thought you had all this figured out, the gov't
changed it: http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html
@@t@h@e@@a@f@f@l@u@e@n@t@@m@e@e@t@@t@h@e@@E@f@f@l@u@e@n@t@@

 

[Watson A.Name - Watt Sun, Dark Remover]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Watson A. Name - Watt Sun, Dark
ews.dslextreme.com>) about 'Isn't this a Contradiction in Terms? IBM
Dishes Out Small, Low-Power Supercomputer', on Sun, 16 Nov 2003:


With Win98SE, the memory check is still done in DOS before Windoze is
booted, AIUI.

But Norton System Doctor, or one of its competitors, does all the checks
rather better anyway.

Have to keep that in mind, thanks. BTW, I can go to DOS box and
rename a bunch of similar filenames in 8.3 format to a different name,
like xxx123 and xxx124 to yyy123 and yyy124, etc.
Like c:> REN xxx*.ext yyy*.ext

But how does one do this in windows, with longer filenames? Does it
require a utility? Thanks.


--
@@F@r@o@m@@O@r@a@n@g@e@@C@o@u@n@t@y@,@@C@a@l@,@@w@h@e@r@e@@
###Got a Question about ELECTRONICS? Check HERE First:###
http://users.pandora.be/educypedia/electronics/databank.htm
My email address is whitelisted. *All* email sent to it
goes directly to the trash unless you add NOSPAM in the
Subject: line with other stuff. alondra101 <at> hotmail.com
Don't be ripped off by the big book dealers. Go to the URL
that will give you a choice and save you money(up to half).
http://www.everybookstore.com You'll be glad you did!
Just when you thought you had all this figured out, the gov't
changed it: http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html
@@t@h@e@@a@f@f@l@u@e@n@t@@m@e@e@t@@t@h@e@@E@f@f@l@u@e@n@t@@

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Watson A. Name - Watt Sun, Dark
ews.dslextreme.com>) about 'Isn't this a Contradiction in Terms? IBM
Dishes Out Small, Low-Power Supercomputer', on Sun, 16 Nov 2003:

But how does one do this in windows, with longer filenames? Does it
require a utility? Thanks.

No. If you right-click on the filename in Windows Explorer you get a
drop-down menu that includes 'Rename', which highlights the filename and
puts the cursor at its end. Very convenient for deleting the extension,
which is probably NOT what you want to do. (;-)

You can also do this by left-clicking once on the filename to highlight
it and then again, NOT TOO QUICKLY, to rename.

 

[Tim Williams]

The most problems I have with W98SE are when I try to run Acrobat
Reader. Sometimes it freezes, and task mgr says not responding. So I
end the task, restart it and it seems okay. For awhile anyway..

Ditto.

I can't really think of anything else that tends to crash Windows,
besides itself every so often when shutting down, for instance.
The occasional IE crash might cause problems, WinAmp's been known to
crap out for some reason, my DOS games have done a little I 'spose.
Overall Win98SE isn't all that bad. Then again, it could be that I've
learned subconciously how to steer around crashes! ;-)

Tim

 

[Tim Williams]

see www.fuckmicrosoft.com

OMG! WTF is CP/M doing on the sidebar! I haven't seen that in
ten years, booting a Kaypro from one of those big 5 1/4" floppies

Tim

 

[Watson A.Name - Watt Sun, Dark Remover]

Chuck Harris wrote:
[snip]

When was the last time you did a Window's upgrade, of any sort, that
didn't require you to reboot several times to make it stick?

Heck, when was the last time you installed an app more than 5MB in size
on a windows box that didn't require a reboot?

[snip]
We all know it take a dual 2G Xeons to run DNS with a Windows box. Any
properly configured 200Mhz *nix box can do the same and DHCP for 10,000
users to boot. Why upgrade that "archaic" boxes when its doing the job
more than adequately.

That's what I said - but you snipped it.

Adrian

--
@@F@r@o@m@@O@r@a@n@g@e@@C@o@u@n@t@y@,@@C@a@l@,@@w@h@e@r@e@@
###Got a Question about ELECTRONICS? Check HERE First:###
http://users.pandora.be/educypedia/electronics/databank.htm
My email address is whitelisted. *All* email sent to it
goes directly to the trash unless you add NOSPAM in the
Subject: line with other stuff. alondra101 <at> hotmail.com
Don't be ripped off by the big book dealers. Go to the URL
that will give you a choice and save you money(up to half).
http://www.everybookstore.com You'll be glad you did!
Just when you thought you had all this figured out, the gov't
changed it: http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html
@@t@h@e@@a@f@f@l@u@e@n@t@@m@e@e@t@@t@h@e@@E@f@f@l@u@e@n@t@@