On Sun, 2002-03-24 at 02:02, Kyle McDonald wrote:
Kyle, This was an excellent read. I've snipped for reasons of brevity but I did read the whole deal. Responses below.. > There are far more (what's wrong with ALi? memory?) different brands > and models to choose from in the AMD market than there are on the Intel > end of things. And once you find that's acceptable to you, you'll get > much better performance from an AMD system. Also with the added > competition you'll probably find something you can use that is even > cheaper. > > -------- > > Now on something totally different. I think this grew from the thread > that started with someone complaining that the P4 that they either had > or were going to get wouldn't run Win95. > > I can't believe that this was attributed to some conspiracy between > Intel and Microsoft. Yeah right (There are other things they're in bed > on -- but this ain't one of them.) It's more likely Intel just not > wanting to keep spending the large sum of money it takes to continue > the backward compatibilty that Win95 would need. The number of people > out there that will decide not to buy a P4 because of this is so small > that it doesn't justify the expense. It's Capitalism, not Conspiracy. <grin> I would have thought that a Sun employee would have been the first to jump on the M$ conspiracy bandwagon. lol! But, I feel the need to make the point that Capitalism and Conspiracy are not mutually exclusive. To the contrary; they tend to enhance and complement each other. Eh...to a degree...with the problem of diminishing returns for consumer value after that. It's no secret that Intel and M$ have been collaborating since the early days. One key gamepiece that will ensure M$ profitability is something called planned obscelesence. I know I'm not bringing up any points that you are not already painfully aware of; I mention them here merely to invite your comments on them. Greed is not something to be underestimated. We in the technical world sometimes tend to assume from a subconscious standpoint that since our primary focus is technical excellence, i.e. products and solutions that work, that this same focus will be the basis for other organizations and movements in the world at large. Unfortunately this is not the case; certainly not with Microsoft, and this is true to a lesser degree with Intel. The bigger that they have gotten, the more important their marketing departments have become, and therefore the more influence that the marketing people have had on the engineering people. Money, not technical excellence, has become the major driving force behind Intel chip architecture. If you assume that Intel product is purchased mainly because Windows is sold with PC's via the M$ tax (and it is), it then becomes important that older Windows versions be taken out of the picture, because in essence these older versions of windows are supplying functionality that is in direct competition with the functionality supplied by Windows XP. Planned Obscelesence(sp?) then becomes an important strategy in your overall scheme, if that scheme is making money. To that end, strategic partnerships with your hardware people can be extremely fruitful. What do you think? Your perspective as a part of the Sun Microsystems team is naturally very important, to me anyway, and I'm looking forward to your commentary. > I don't think people realize how much money, time, and effort, it takes > to design, test, support, etc this type of thing. These chips are very > complex. The machines they end up a part of are even more so. It takes > an extraordinary effort to truely make sure of compatibility. Yes. And it's unappreciated. > This is also why I don't understand how anyone can say a motherboard, > chipset, or OS (like Mandrake Linux) is totally crap and won't work > for anyone just becuase it didn't work for them. If microsoft with > their vast budget can't test every hardware combination, How does anyone > expect Mandrake to? At least Microsoft has either inside knowledge > when writing drivers, or the hardware vendor itself writes the windows > drivers. > Linux has to rely on volunteers. Who many times don't have the chipset > documentation, or when they do, it contains errors and/or omissions, and > they can't just call or walk down the hall to the ASIC designer and ask > a question. True...and again, the efforts are sometimes unappreciated. > As high as we all think MS's prices are. They spend pretty much every > dollar they take in. Where do you think it all goes? Not all of it > goes to testing but a big chunk does. Even with all of us sending > contributions to RedHat or Mandrake it still wouldn't be a drop in the > bucket compared to to the resources MS has. > > Mandrake, Redhat, etc dont have the money to go out and buy the HW to > put together every motherboard with every sound card with every video > board and every network card. Every one of those things (and more) is a > variable in an extremely complex system. And if you change even just > one thing it can cause changes in other places that aren't readily > obvious. Basically if you've ever gotten a distribution that worked > flawlessly, you got lucky. You practically won the lottery. The odds > are probably that great. > > Obviously the people who develop and distribute Linux put alot of > work into it (I don't want to downplay the effort these people put into > the community,) so on popular combinations it's hard work and design, > not luck, that it works alot of the time. The luck is in the fact > that you happen to own one of the HW combinations that the developers > owned and tested. > > This is why the Linux distributions rely on the end users to test beta > releases and report bugs. If you like your distribution of Linux, and > want to make sure the next release will continue to work on your > machines, then you need to try it out. You may be the only person out > there with that CDROM plugged into that port on that mother board > alongside that Harddrive. If you don't test it who is going to?? > > If you can't afford to wipe your working system to load something that > will probably have bugs the first time around, then go buy a second > hardrive, or dust one off that you were going to throw out. Pick a > weekend. Put it in, load it up, try out the things you do everyday. > Take notes on the bugs and problems. > > When the weekend's over, put the original drive back in. Go back to > your current stable release. Lastly make sure you write up your findings > ans send them in. Keep that second drive around though. If a later > release is suposed to fix your problems, then put it back in, load up > the changes and try it out. > > I don't want to talk anyone out of paying for the Mandrake CD's or > sending in a contribution, but it may just be that $50 or $60 bucks > spent on a 'testing' Harddrive might actually be a better investment > for the linux community as a whole. > > -Kyle With a stable MandrakeSoft, yes; you point is well taken. With them in a cash crunch, it is probably better to put the funds towards assisting their survival first, and then looking after the community afterwards. Just my wooden nickel's worth. ;) > _ > -------------------------------ooO( )Ooo------------------------------- > Kyle J. McDonald (o o) Systems Support Engineer > Sun Microsystems Inc. ||||| > Enterprise Server Products [EMAIL PROTECTED] > 1 Network Drive BUR03-4630 \\\// voice: (781) 442-2184 > Burlington, MA 01803 (o o) fax: (781) 442-1542 > -------------------------------ooO(_)Ooo------------------------------- > > _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
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