Many years ago I used VMS a great deal & thought it was the greatest thing 
since sliced bread.  But where I live I haven't seen anyone interested in 
VMS in about 20 years, and most people have never even heard of it.

My 1st job out of college was for EDS, who used VMS for plant floor 
automation for GM.  When I left EDS I worked for a small company (KMS 
Fusion) that did scientific research; they were a heavy user of VMS (and 
RSX) and active in DECUS.  We were at v5.5 or so, as I recall.

I've been following this newsgroup for a few months now & see a fair bit of 
activity.  Which leads me to wonder what VMS is used for these days?  Who 
uses it, and where?  Is it still being developed?  Does anyone do any 
development of software to run on it?

Just curious...

-- 
Al Dunstan, Software Engineer
OptiMetrics, Inc.
3115 Professional Drive
Ann Arbor, MI  48104-5131

"There are two ways of constructing a software design.  One way is to
make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies.  And the
other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious
deficiencies."
            - C. A. R. Hoare

A. W. Dunstan wrote 2012-02-01 19:30:
> Many years ago I used VMS a great deal&  thought it was the greatest thing
> since sliced bread.  But where I live I haven't seen anyone interested in
> VMS in about 20 years, and most people have never even heard of it.
>
> My 1st job out of college was for EDS, who used VMS for plant floor
> automation for GM.  When I left EDS I worked for a small company (KMS
> Fusion) that did scientific research; they were a heavy user of VMS (and
> RSX) and active in DECUS.  We were at v5.5 or so, as I recall.
>
> I've been following this newsgroup for a few months now&  see a fair bit of
> activity.  Which leads me to wonder what VMS is used for these days?

More or less the same things as wen you were active. :-)

> Who uses it, and where?

Probably those who do, also used it 20 years ago.

> Is it still being developed?

Yes. Latest version (8.4) released summer 2010.
Of course, not the major leaps as when things like clusters was
released. Mostly adaptions to new hardware and storage.

> Does anyone do any development of software to run on it?

I do. COBOL and Rdb.

B.t.w, Sweden has a few large VMS users. Swedish users regulary
sends aprox 20 attendents to the OpenVMS Bootcamp. About the
same number as the rest of Europe together... :-)

Jan-Erik.

>
> Just curious...
>

On Feb 1, 2:02=A0pm, Jan-Erik Soderholm <jan-erik.soderh...@telia.com>
wrote:
> A. W. Dunstan wrote 2012-02-01 19:30:
>
> > Many years ago I used VMS a great deal& =A0thought it was the greatest =
thing
> > since sliced bread. =A0But where I live I haven't seen anyone intereste=
d in
> > VMS in about 20 years, and most people have never even heard of it.
>
> > My 1st job out of college was for EDS, who used VMS for plant floor
> > automation for GM. =A0When I left EDS I worked for a small company (KMS
> > Fusion) that did scientific research; they were a heavy user of VMS (an=
d
> > RSX) and active in DECUS. =A0We were at v5.5 or so, as I recall.
>
> > I've been following this newsgroup for a few months now& =A0see a fair =
bit of
> > activity. =A0Which leads me to wonder what VMS is used for these days?
>
> More or less the same things as wen you were active. :-)
>
> > Who uses it, and where?
>
> Probably those who do, also used it 20 years ago.
>
> > Is it still being developed?
>
> Yes. Latest version (8.4) released summer 2010.
> Of course, not the major leaps as when things like clusters was
> released. Mostly adaptions to new hardware and storage.
>
> > Does anyone do any development of software to run on it?
>
> I do. COBOL and Rdb.
>
> B.t.w, Sweden has a few large VMS users. Swedish users regulary
> sends aprox 20 attendents to the OpenVMS Bootcamp. About the
> same number as the rest of Europe together... :-)
>
> Jan-Erik.
>
>
>
>
>
> > Just curious...- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

I support a lab information system currently running on OpenVMS.  It
is the most stable platform around.  I ahve 1 machine now with an
uptime of 1100+ days.  Others are a little less.  Fortran, Macro32 and
RDB being the main components.

Dan

On 2/1/2012 1:30 PM, A. W. Dunstan wrote:
> Many years ago I used VMS a great deal&  thought it was the greatest thing
> since sliced bread.  But where I live I haven't seen anyone interested in
> VMS in about 20 years, and most people have never even heard of it.
>
> My 1st job out of college was for EDS, who used VMS for plant floor
> automation for GM.  When I left EDS I worked for a small company (KMS
> Fusion) that did scientific research; they were a heavy user of VMS (and
> RSX) and active in DECUS.  We were at v5.5 or so, as I recall.
>
> I've been following this newsgroup for a few months now&  see a fair bit of
> activity.  Which leads me to wonder what VMS is used for these days?  Who
> uses it, and where?  Is it still being developed?  Does anyone do any
> development of software to run on it?

I will assume that VMS is mostly used for critical stuff that
for whatever reason is very difficult to port to another
platform.

(otherwise some manager would have ordered a migration
years ago)

There are still VMS people around. More than enough for
the work. I think very few new people enter the VMS world.

I expect very few new from scratch projects to start
on VMS these days. But all those critical app that
are still around require maintenance and enhancements.

Fortran, Pascal, C, C++, PL/I, Cobol, Basic etc.etc..

Arne

Jan-Erik Soderholm <jan-erik.soderholm@telia.com> wrote:
> A. W. Dunstan wrote 2012-02-01 19:30:
>> Just curious...
>> Does anyone do any development of software to run on it?
> 
> I do. COBOL and Rdb.
> B.t.w, Sweden has a few large VMS users. Swedish users regulary
> sends aprox 20 attendents to the OpenVMS Bootcamp. About the
> same number as the rest of Europe together... :-)  Jan-Erik.

Also just curious... what would you say explains Swedish VMS
usage? As Arne mentioned, US managers have all migrated long
ago, unless impractical. So I suppose there's some different
kind of managerial/business-analysis thinking in Sweden that
keeps VMS a viable platform. Could you elaborate about that?
I'd be interested in any reasonable (not religious/strident)
arguments to keep it going. Thanks,
-- 
John Forkosh  ( mailto:  j@f.com  where j=john and f=forkosh )

JohnF wrote:

> Also just curious... what would you say explains Swedish VMS
> usage? 

Long dark winters, saunas and georgeous women ? :-)

I think that Sweden's VMS usage is skewed by one company, OMS/OMX which
has written VMS software to run stock exchanges and not only uses it for
itself but has sold it to other stock exchanges as well.

On Thu, 02 Feb 2012 03:47:37 -0500, JF Mezei
<jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> wrote:

>JohnF wrote:
>
>> Also just curious... what would you say explains Swedish VMS
>> usage? 
>
>Long dark winters, saunas and georgeous women ? :-)
>
>I think that Sweden's VMS usage is skewed by one company, OMS/OMX which
>has written VMS software to run stock exchanges and not only uses it for
>itself but has sold it to other stock exchanges as well.

Sigh, :-)

Perhaps they can be convinced to buy VMS from HP, the Swedes aren't
fools.

An impractical fantasy, mayhaps, guilty as charged.

JF Mezei wrote 2012-02-02 09:47:
> JohnF wrote:
>
>> Also just curious... what would you say explains Swedish VMS
>> usage?
>
> Long dark winters, saunas and georgeous women ? :-)
>
> I think that Sweden's VMS usage is skewed by one company, OMS/OMX which
> has written VMS software to run stock exchanges and not only uses it for
> itself but has sold it to other stock exchanges as well.

OMX is just one of them

There is a large furniture 4-letter company that is a heavy
VMS user. Every shop around the world has VMS systems and there
is a large VMS center to run all backend processing.

The steel business is also large.

Companies Volvo, SAAB, Ericsson are/was large VMS shops.

on 1/02/2012, A. W. Dunstan supposed :
> Many years ago I used VMS a great deal & thought it was the greatest thing 
> since sliced bread.  But where I live I haven't seen anyone interested in 
> VMS in about 20 years, and most people have never even heard of it.
>
> My 1st job out of college was for EDS, who used VMS for plant floor 
> automation for GM.  When I left EDS I worked for a small company (KMS 
> Fusion) that did scientific research; they were a heavy user of VMS (and 
> RSX) and active in DECUS.  We were at v5.5 or so, as I recall.
>
> I've been following this newsgroup for a few months now & see a fair bit of 
> activity.  Which leads me to wonder what VMS is used for these days?  Who 
> uses it, and where?  Is it still being developed?  Does anyone do any 
> development of software to run on it?
>
> Just curious...

I still manage 20 OpenVMS systems - they are involved in the processing
of all debit and credit card payments in Belgium, about one billion
payments per year. Cobol, C/C++, myself still doing some bits of
Pascal, and ACMS (yes!). All on Itanium blades and EVA SAN storage.
Not the most stable in the company (we also still have NSK which is
even more robust) but certainly the best performance/stability/cost
ratio. Although I must admit that since cross-breeding started to
happen between OpenVMS and HP-UX, this one (11iV3)now comes as a
very close second.

-- 
Marc Van Dyck

In article <mn.12f77dc249c2b96f.104627@invalid.skynet.be>, Marc Van Dyck
<marc.gr.vandyck@invalid.skynet.be> writes:

> Although I must admit that since cross-breeding started to
> happen between OpenVMS and HP-UX, this one (11iV3)now comes as a
> very close second.

How comes? Don't we hear here over and over again what a
"worthless puddle of #@$%&" HP-UX is? 

In article <6eedneo9GfldGbTSnZ2dnUVZ_s2dnZ2d@megapath.net>, "A. W. Dunstan" <no@spam.thanks> writes:
> 
> I've been following this newsgroup for a few months now & see a fair bit of 
> activity.  Which leads me to wonder what VMS is used for these days?  

   Everything, though few use it for word processing or spreadsheets.

> Who 
> uses it, and where?

   That would be a long list.  Smaller than it was in the 80's, but
   still too long for a post here.  Schools, military, general bussiness,
   hobbyists, stock markets, ...

>  Is it still being developed?  

   Yes, but the development team is now in India.

>Does anyone do any 
> development of software to run on it?

   Absolutely.  There is a fairly long list of COTS applications, and
   lots of people do in-house or custom software on it.

In article <4f29d684$0$281$14726298@news.sunsite.dk>, =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?= <arne@vajhoej.dk> writes:

> I will assume that VMS is mostly used for critical stuff that
> for whatever reason is very difficult to port to another
> platform.
> 
> (otherwise some manager would have ordered a migration
> years ago)

   There have been many reports of such orders being given anyhow, and
   failing.

In article <3dnki7la6nhtrgqqbirtd3ab7gv6p91q6b@4ax.com>, Subcommandante XDelta <vlf@star.enet.dec.com> writes:
> 
> Perhaps they can be convinced to buy VMS from HP, the Swedes aren't
> fools.

   Would it actually be better to have VMS maintained in Sweden than
   in India?  Why?

   No point in having VMS go the way of Saab.

On 2-2-2012 15:57, Bob Koehler wrote:
>     Would it actually be better to have VMS maintained in Sweden than
>     in India?  Why?

Please tell me you're joking...

  - MG

MG wrote 2012-02-02 16:45:

> On 2-2-2012 15:57, Bob Koehler wrote:
>> Would it actually be better to have VMS maintained in Sweden than
>> in India? Why?
>
> Please tell me you're joking...
>
> - MG

With an hourly cost 5 times of India, it's of course
a joke. :-) Every larger IT consulting company over here
has a lot of indian techies. Don't missunderstand me,
they are usualy *very* bright people!

 > >  Is it still being developed?
 >
 >   Yes, but the development team is now in India.

Yes, and the development team is now in India.
Why the "but" ?

Michael Kraemer brought next idea :
> In article <mn.12f77dc249c2b96f.104627@invalid.skynet.be>, Marc Van Dyck
> <marc.gr.vandyck@invalid.skynet.be> writes:
>
>> Although I must admit that since cross-breeding started to
>> happen between OpenVMS and HP-UX, this one (11iV3)now comes as a
>> very close second.
>
> How comes? Don't we hear here over and over again what a
> "worthless puddle of #@$%&" HP-UX is? 

Don't know - but I'm using both, so I can compare. For applications
that use a SAN and do a lot of I/O, we consider HP-UX far more stable
and efficient than Linux. There are some points for which I still
regret Tru64 - AdvFS and Tru Cluster, to name them - but for what
we are doing, HP-UX does the job whe expect it to do.

-- 
Marc Van Dyck

On 2 Feb 2012 08:24:58 -0600, koehler@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org
(Bob Koehler) wrote:

>In article <6eedneo9GfldGbTSnZ2dnUVZ_s2dnZ2d@megapath.net>, "A. W. Dunstan" <no@spam.thanks> writes:
>> 
>> I've been following this newsgroup for a few months now & see a fair bit of 
>> activity.  Which leads me to wonder what VMS is used for these days?  
>
>   Everything, though few use it for word processing or spreadsheets.
>
>> Who 
>> uses it, and where?
>
>   That would be a long list.  Smaller than it was in the 80's, but
>   still too long for a post here.  Schools, military, general bussiness,
>   hobbyists, stock markets, ...

Well, technically, it's not too long to post... :-)

In a properly managed and marketed VMS, such client categorisation and
statistics would be publically available, and such categorisation
would be mappable over time.

As for a list of specific clients of VMS, that is a dual edged sword,
especially for those seeking to steal VMS away to another OS, OTOH,
that is probably going to happen away (seeking to steal customers) and
the virtue of such a customer (Customer opt-in/out of course) list, is
that it demonstrates the extent of the VMS usage and could assuage
customer confidence in VMS's long term viability.

>>  Is it still being developed?  
>
>   Yes, but the development team is now in India.

Burial team you mean.

>>Does anyone do any 
>> development of software to run on it?
>
>   Absolutely.  There is a fairly long list of COTS applications, and
>   lots of people do in-house or custom software on it.

Are the accurate lists of COTS's, and VAR's and ISv's available?

All these things are useful to be explicated.

Marc Van Dyck wrote:
> Although I must admit that since cross-breeding started to
> happen between OpenVMS and HP-UX, this one (11iV3)now comes as a
> very close second.


Could you elaborate on what sort of VMS features were implemented in
HP-UX ?

The one big ticket item was to have been clustering, but LaCarly canned
this in favour of a deal with veritas.

In article <jgd71h$h8f$1@reader1.panix.com>, JohnF
<john@please.see.sig.for.email.com> writes: 

> Also just curious... what would you say explains Swedish VMS
> usage? As Arne mentioned, US managers have all migrated long
> ago, unless impractical. So I suppose there's some different
> kind of managerial/business-analysis thinking in Sweden that
> keeps VMS a viable platform. Could you elaborate about that?
> I'd be interested in any reasonable (not religious/strident)
> arguments to keep it going. Thanks,

While I'm sure Jan-Erik can say much more about this than I can, it is 
certainly the case in Sweden that the difference between the managers 
and those at the bottom of the totem pole is less than about anywhere 
else in the world, however this difference is measured.  That might have 
something to do with it.

But the real mystery question is whether your flush-right paragraph is a 
coincidence or is intentional.

In article <4f2a4da9$0$31231$c3e8da3$b280bf18@news.astraweb.com>, JF
Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> writes: 

> JohnF wrote:
> 
> > Also just curious... what would you say explains Swedish VMS
> > usage? 
> 
> Long dark winters, saunas and georgeous women ? :-)

Unfortunately, in constrast to the German- and Dutch-speaking countries,
one rarely sees much of gorgeous women IN the sauna in Sweden, since the
rule (there are a few exceptions) is swimsuits required or separated by
sex (at least not both as sometimes in England), while in the the
German- and Dutch-speaking countries the rule (there are a few 
exceptions) is mixed and nudity required.

> I think that Sweden's VMS usage is skewed by one company, OMS/OMX which
> has written VMS software to run stock exchanges and not only uses it for
> itself but has sold it to other stock exchanges as well.

IKEA is also another large Swedish company which uses a lot of VMS.  
Also the Swedish national lottery runs on VMS.  I'm sure Jan-Erik can 
mention a few others.

Bob Koehler wrote:

>    Would it actually be better to have VMS maintained in Sweden than
>    in India?  Why?


The success of an OS isn't based on where it is maintained, it is based
on how much the owner wants to spend to improve the OS.


Once you ditch the original and highly experienced real VMS engineers,
whether you hire newbie indians or newbie swedes probably doesn't make
much of a difference.

The problem with India is that it is not only *seen* as low cost, but
also low quality, mostly because most companies that choose to outsource
to India usually choose to pay for low quality support.

But a company could move to India and pay for experienced graduates and
have top quality software done.

Sweden would have an advantage over India because it does have a pool of
experience VMS folks who have used and developped on VMS. (especially if
Saab has let go many IT worker with VMS experience)

But my guess is that HP would more likely turn to folks like Hoff to
help port VMS to the 8086.

<cue in instant denial of any official plans to port VMS to 8086>

On 2-2-2012 21:58, JF Mezei wrote:
> The problem with India is that it is not only *seen* as low cost, but
> also low quality, mostly because most companies that choose to outsource
> to India usually choose to pay for low quality support.

Bingo.

  - MG

On Thu, 2012-02-02 at 15:58 -0500, JF Mezei wrote:
>=20
> But my guess is that HP would more likely turn to folks like Hoff to
> help port VMS to the 8086.
>=20
> <cue in instant denial of any official plans to port VMS to 8086>=20

Bugger 8086, why not port to ARM instead? :)
--=20
Tactical Nuclear Kittens

On 2/2/2012 9:56 AM, Bob Koehler wrote:
> In article<4f29d684$0$281$14726298@news.sunsite.dk>, =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?=<arne@vajhoej.dk>  writes:
>> I will assume that VMS is mostly used for critical stuff that
>> for whatever reason is very difficult to port to another
>> platform.
>>
>> (otherwise some manager would have ordered a migration
>> years ago)
>
>     There have been many reports of such orders being given anyhow, and
>     failing.

It has been mentioned.

But it is difficult to say if and how much it is worse
than other large IT projects.

Arne

On Thu, 02 Feb 2012 23:07:27 +0000, Single Stage to Orbit
<alex.buell@munted.org.uk> wrote:

>On Thu, 2012-02-02 at 15:58 -0500, JF Mezei wrote:
>> 
>> But my guess is that HP would more likely turn to folks like Hoff to
>> help port VMS to the 8086.
>> 
>> <cue in instant denial of any official plans to port VMS to 8086> 
>
>Bugger 8086, why not port to ARM instead? :)

Simple, kick Microsoft's ass from here to kingdom come.

Who's your Daddy? ;-)

On Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:45:20 +0100, MG <marcogbNO@SPAMxs4all.nl>
wrote:

>On 2-2-2012 15:57, Bob Koehler wrote:
>>     Would it actually be better to have VMS maintained in Sweden than
>>     in India?  Why?
>
>Please tell me you're joking...
>
>  - MG

I'll bite, unaccustomed as the VLF is to barking up trees and going
out on a limb, and anyway, I need to give my new dentures a chomp in
the park.

"Indian Call Centre", elegantly summarises the problem.

Yes, it is terribly fashionable in management sub-cultures of modern
corporations to gut them and outsource the jobs of minions lesser than
them to the third-world, whilst, of course, that thin smear of
top-management, continues to earn outrageous incomes and grant
themselves ridicious bonuses, even if the esprit de corp of the
corporation is shot to shyte, and the long term viability of the
enterprise.

So is the exporting of VMS Engineering and whatnot to India a case of
"Fashion Victimisation"? - I do not think so, it's was a deliberate
act of bastardisation to kill off, or savagely attenuate, the residual
cultural legacy of VMS Engineering from the days of DEC - with the
objective of establishing a heavy lid on the preservation and
extension of VMS development and business.

They sacked, super-annuated or made redundant with payouts, many of
which with gagged gobs courtesy of the NDA's that they signed - a
generational purge of VMS advocacy and insurrection within the ranks
of VMS Engineering.

And replaced with what? a culturally crew cut clone army of PhD's and
ersatz beige bizoids, who despite what ever good character and
vertebral systems they might otherwise posess, are all going to be of
the essence of "yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir, anything you
want sir, how would you like your VMS butchered?"

- Otherwise... it's back to the slums for them! -

And they can kiss good-bye their dreams of the "HP way" corporate
life-style (Lite, extremely Lite). -

No vigorous debate and resistance at meetings about the direction of
VMS in India!

Totally supine, totally submissive to some nasty smear of management
back in the states at HP HQ that engineered and implemented this
deliberate hatchet job to kill off VMS.

Come the revolution, VMS Engineering is moved back out of India, and
any of the quality (spine, character and technical skills) are given
the green card treatment, commensurate and proportionate salaries and
the opportunity to taste the Actual American "dream." 

No matter where you find your pool of PhD's pay them peanuts and you
get monkey code, when I initially heard of the bastard act of Indian
outsourcing, I not so much thought, "there goes the neighbourhood" as
"there goes the quality of the VMS code-base" - noise is going to
enter, and bug-recursion.

(What was the versions of VMS/VAX and VMS/AXP just prior to the move?)

Back to the Sweden v India question:

Not to put too fine a point on it, India is a slum ridden open sewer
that has recently caught the capitalist disease in concert with an
extremely corrupt governance system - whereas Sweden, like all the
Scandinavian, Nordic, Social Democracies are the anti-thesis of that.

You don't survive Nordic winters unless you dot those i's, cross those
t's, do your due diligence and pull together as a team, and that is
reflected in the contemporary social and governance cultures in
Scandinavia.

Things are thought out well, designed well and implemented well, deep
quality is an ingrained survival trait - so I find it of little wonder
that there is an natural affinity of the Swedish mind to VMS.

Moreover if VMS Engineering and associated camp followers were based
in Sweden the would be substantially less tolerance of bullshit in the
governance of VMS, coming from VMS HQ - people would speak their minds
frankly and forthrightly.

"Oh no! - back to the slums for us!" is not a behavioural constraint
in the Scandinavias, every one is valued as implied by the civil
society infrastructure investment.

I might be elliptically, nay, hyperbolically, off the mark and talking
through my proverbial, but I am happy to be stood corrected. 

On 2/2/2012 6:07 PM, Single Stage to Orbit wrote:
> On Thu, 2012-02-02 at 15:58 -0500, JF Mezei wrote:
>>
>> But my guess is that HP would more likely turn to folks like Hoff to
>> help port VMS to the 8086.
>>
>> <cue in instant denial of any official plans to port VMS to 8086>
>
> Bugger 8086, why not port to ARM instead? :)

How about, "Because H-P is not interested in doing anything more with 
VMS than it is contractually obligated to do!"

The hand writing on the wall has been painfully clear for the last 
fifteen or twenty years.  VMS is an unwanted step child and H-P will
do only enough to meet their contractual obligations.

If somebody wanted VMS badly enough to purchase the rights to VMS and to 
assume responsibility for maintenance and H-P's contractual obligations, 
H-P would be glad to be rid of it!

They might even pay you to take if off their hands!

Phillip Helbig---undress to reply <helbig@astro.multiclothesvax.de> wrote:
> JohnF <john@please.see.sig.for.email.com> writes: 
> 
>> Also just curious... what would you say explains Swedish VMS
>> usage? As Arne mentioned, US managers have all migrated long
>> ago, unless impractical. So I suppose there's some different
>> kind of managerial/business-analysis thinking in Sweden that
>> keeps VMS a viable platform. Could you elaborate about that?
>> I'd be interested in any reasonable (not religious/strident)
>> arguments to keep it going. Thanks,
> 
> While I'm sure Jan-Erik can say much more about this than I
> can, it is certainly the case in Sweden that the difference
> between the managers and those at the bottom of the totem
> pole is less than about anywhere else in the world, however
> this difference is measured. That might have something to
> do with it.

Thanks, Phillip, very interesting conjecture indeed. Too bad
there's no way in heck that'll ever happen in the USA. I was
hoping for something that would be applicable here (New York
City). I guess your underlying idea is that the "underlings"
who actually know what's what, also have some say about what
happens. ...<thinking>... nope, I don't see how that'll ever
happen here, either:)

> But the real mystery question is whether your flush-right
> paragraph is a coincidence or is intentional.
That would be telling.
-- 
John Forkosh  ( mailto:  j@f.com  where j=john and f=forkosh )

On 2/2/2012 3:58 PM, JF Mezei wrote:
> Bob Koehler wrote:
>>     Would it actually be better to have VMS maintained in Sweden than
>>     in India?  Why?
>
> The success of an OS isn't based on where it is maintained, it is based
> on how much the owner wants to spend to improve the OS.
>
>
> Once you ditch the original and highly experienced real VMS engineers,
> whether you hire newbie indians or newbie swedes probably doesn't make
> much of a difference.

But what about indians with lots of experience.

It is my understanding that indians has been working on VMS
for many many years.

> Sweden would have an advantage over India because it does have a pool of
> experience VMS folks who have used and developped on VMS. (especially if
> Saab has let go many IT worker with VMS experience)

Did Saab use VMS?

Arne

On Thu, 2012-02-02 at 20:40 -0500, Richard B. Gilbert wrote:
> > Bugger 8086, why not port to ARM instead? :)
>=20
> How about, "Because H-P is not interested in doing anything more with=20
> VMS than it is contractually obligated to do!"
>=20
> The hand writing on the wall has been painfully clear for the last=20
> fifteen or twenty years.  VMS is an unwanted step child and H-P will
> do only enough to meet their contractual obligations.
>=20
> If somebody wanted VMS badly enough to purchase the rights to VMS and
> to assume responsibility for maintenance and H-P's contractual
> obligations, H-P would be glad to be rid of it!
>=20
> They might even pay you to take if off their hands!=20

We'll see.=20
--=20
Tactical Nuclear Kittens

On 2/2/2012 9:57 AM, Bob Koehler wrote:
> In article<3dnki7la6nhtrgqqbirtd3ab7gv6p91q6b@4ax.com>, Subcommandante XDelta<vlf@star.enet.dec.com>  writes:
>>
>> Perhaps they can be convinced to buy VMS from HP, the Swedes aren't
>> fools.
>
>     Would it actually be better to have VMS maintained in Sweden than
>     in India?  Why?

It would certainly be a lot more expensive.

Arne

On 2/2/2012 12:30 AM, JohnF wrote:
> Jan-Erik Soderholm<jan-erik.soderholm@telia.com>  wrote:
>> A. W. Dunstan wrote 2012-02-01 19:30:
>>> Just curious...
>>> Does anyone do any development of software to run on it?
>>
>> I do. COBOL and Rdb.
>> B.t.w, Sweden has a few large VMS users. Swedish users regulary
>> sends aprox 20 attendents to the OpenVMS Bootcamp. About the
>> same number as the rest of Europe together... :-)  Jan-Erik.
>
> Also just curious... what would you say explains Swedish VMS
> usage? As Arne mentioned, US managers have all migrated long
> ago, unless impractical. So I suppose there's some different
> kind of managerial/business-analysis thinking in Sweden that
> keeps VMS a viable platform. Could you elaborate about that?
> I'd be interested in any reasonable (not religious/strident)
> arguments to keep it going.

There are probably many reasons.

Some guesses:
* less focus on next quarters earnings and more focus
   on long term earnings
   - more real owners
   - day trading not so fashionable
   result in more long term planning
* lots of big companies (MS rules the small company world)
* tradition of listening to the people at the floor
* strong starting position (both in general and at universities) back
   in the 80's and 90's
* the do as everybody else philosophy works both ways: if
   no one is leaving VMS then no one is thinking about it

Arne

Arne Vajh�j wrote:

> It is my understanding that indians has been working on VMS
> for many many years.


That is correct. But most of the indian's work has been maintenance,
recompiling VMS applciations for new version of VMS (for instance, they
have had TPU/EVE for many years and haven't done anything except
recompile it).

There may have been a few highly experienced guys with abilities such as
Clustering over IP. But this small core wouldn't be able to handle all
of the VMS core/kernel.

And HP has been quite adament that nobody should compare the indian
staffing levels to staffing levels of the real VMS engineering. So we
have no idea if they replaced the real vms engineers with more or fewer
untrained newbie indians.

Arne Vajh�j wrote 2012-02-03 03:03:
> On 2/2/2012 3:58 PM, JF Mezei wrote:
>> Bob Koehler wrote:
>>> Would it actually be better to have VMS maintained in Sweden than
>>> in India? Why?
>>
>> The success of an OS isn't based on where it is maintained, it is based
>> on how much the owner wants to spend to improve the OS.
>>
>>
>> Once you ditch the original and highly experienced real VMS engineers,
>> whether you hire newbie indians or newbie swedes probably doesn't make
>> much of a difference.
>
> But what about indians with lots of experience.
>
> It is my understanding that indians has been working on VMS
> for many many years.
>
>> Sweden would have an advantage over India because it does have a pool of
>> experience VMS folks who have used and developped on VMS. (especially if
>> Saab has let go many IT worker with VMS experience)
>
> Did Saab use VMS?
>

I know that the flight/airplane part of SAAB was/is a large VMS user.
Can't tell about the automobile part...


> Arne
>

JF Mezei explained on 2/02/2012 :
> Marc Van Dyck wrote:
>> Although I must admit that since cross-breeding started to
>> happen between OpenVMS and HP-UX, this one (11iV3)now comes as a
>> very close second.
>
>
> Could you elaborate on what sort of VMS features were implemented in
> HP-UX ?
>
> The one big ticket item was to have been clustering, but LaCarly canned
> this in favour of a deal with veritas.

I would not say "features" - but to give an example, HP-UX behaviour
with SANs was a nightmare in 11iV1, went a bit better with V2, and
now behaves almost identically as OpenVMS in V3. It certainly is not
a coincidence. And to me, such enhancements are definitely more
important than new bells, whistles or gadgets in a user interface,
because it positively impacts stability and operability.

-- 
Marc Van Dyck

In article <jgfef2$cjd$1@reader1.panix.com>, JohnF
<john@please.see.sig.for.email.com> writes: 

> >> Also just curious... what would you say explains Swedish VMS
> >> usage? As Arne mentioned, US managers have all migrated long
> >> ago, unless impractical. So I suppose there's some different
> >> kind of managerial/business-analysis thinking in Sweden that
> >> keeps VMS a viable platform. Could you elaborate about that?
> >> I'd be interested in any reasonable (not religious/strident)
> >> arguments to keep it going. Thanks,
> > 
> > While I'm sure Jan-Erik can say much more about this than I
> > can, it is certainly the case in Sweden that the difference
> > between the managers and those at the bottom of the totem
> > pole is less than about anywhere else in the world, however
> > this difference is measured. That might have something to
> > do with it.
> 
> Thanks, Phillip, very interesting conjecture indeed. Too bad
> there's no way in heck that'll ever happen in the USA. I was
> hoping for something that would be applicable here (New York
> City). I guess your underlying idea is that the "underlings"
> who actually know what's what, also have some say about what
> happens. ...<thinking>... nope, I don't see how that'll ever
> happen here, either:)
> 
> > But the real mystery question is whether your flush-right
> > paragraph is a coincidence or is intentional.
> That would be telling.

I've seen people flesh out text with extra spaces (SMS's HELP files for
ZIP and UNZIP come to mind), but yours have no extra spaces.  Which is 
it:

   o  You have WAY too much time on your hands.

   o  You have a nifty DCL routine to do it.

   o  You're a wizard.

   o  Other.

abrsvc wrote:

> On Feb 1, 2:02 pm, Jan-Erik Soderholm <jan-erik.soderh...@telia.com>
> wrote:
>> A. W. Dunstan wrote 2012-02-01 19:30:
>>
>> > Many years ago I used VMS a great deal&  thought it was the greatest
>> > thing since sliced bread.  But where I live I haven't seen anyone
>> > interested in VMS in about 20 years, and most people have never even
>> > heard of it.
>>
>> > My 1st job out of college was for EDS, who used VMS for plant floor
>> > automation for GM.  When I left EDS I worked for a small company (KMS
>> > Fusion) that did scientific research; they were a heavy user of VMS
>> > (and RSX) and active in DECUS.  We were at v5.5 or so, as I recall.
>>
>> > I've been following this newsgroup for a few months now&  see a fair
>> > bit of activity.  Which leads me to wonder what VMS is used for these
>> > days?
>>
>> More or less the same things as wen you were active. :-)
>>
>> > Who uses it, and where?
>>
>> Probably those who do, also used it 20 years ago.
>>
>> > Is it still being developed?
>>
>> Yes. Latest version (8.4) released summer 2010.
>> Of course, not the major leaps as when things like clusters was
>> released. Mostly adaptions to new hardware and storage.
>>
>> > Does anyone do any development of software to run on it?
>>
>> I do. COBOL and Rdb.
>>
>> B.t.w, Sweden has a few large VMS users. Swedish users regulary
>> sends aprox 20 attendents to the OpenVMS Bootcamp. About the
>> same number as the rest of Europe together... :-)
>>
>> Jan-Erik.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > Just curious...- Hide quoted text -
>>
>> - Show quoted text -
> 
> I support a lab information system currently running on OpenVMS.  It
> is the most stable platform around.  I ahve 1 machine now with an
> uptime of 1100+ days.  Others are a little less.  Fortran, Macro32 and
> RDB being the main components.
> 
> Dan

Interesting.  One of my reasons for asking was that I so rarely hear mention 
of VMS (outside this newsgroup, anyway).  No ads looking for programmers or 
sysadmins, certainly no ads encouraging people to give it a try & see how 
good it is.  Not much point in listing it on my resume...sigh...

-- 
Al Dunstan, Software Engineer
OptiMetrics, Inc.
3115 Professional Drive
Ann Arbor, MI  48104-5131

"There are two ways of constructing a software design.  One way is to
make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies.  And the
other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious
deficiencies."
            - C. A. R. Hoare

On 2012-02-03 03.03, Arne Vajh�j wrote:
> On 2/2/2012 3:58 PM, JF Mezei wrote:
>> Sweden would have an advantage over India because it does have a pool of
>> experience VMS folks who have used and developped on VMS. (especially if
>> Saab has let go many IT worker with VMS experience)
>
> Did Saab use VMS?

Depends on which SAAB you are talking about.
The airplane/defense manufacturer, or the car company?

The former definitely did, and probably still do. The car manufacturer - 
I have no idea...

	Johnny

On 2012-02-03 03.17, Arne Vajh�j wrote:
> On 2/2/2012 12:30 AM, JohnF wrote:
>> Jan-Erik Soderholm<jan-erik.soderholm@telia.com> wrote:
>>> A. W. Dunstan wrote 2012-02-01 19:30:
>>>> Just curious...
>>>> Does anyone do any development of software to run on it?
>>>
>>> I do. COBOL and Rdb.
>>> B.t.w, Sweden has a few large VMS users. Swedish users regulary
>>> sends aprox 20 attendents to the OpenVMS Bootcamp. About the
>>> same number as the rest of Europe together... :-) Jan-Erik.
>>
>> Also just curious... what would you say explains Swedish VMS
>> usage? As Arne mentioned, US managers have all migrated long
>> ago, unless impractical. So I suppose there's some different
>> kind of managerial/business-analysis thinking in Sweden that
>> keeps VMS a viable platform. Could you elaborate about that?
>> I'd be interested in any reasonable (not religious/strident)
>> arguments to keep it going.
>
> There are probably many reasons.
>
> Some guesses:
> * less focus on next quarters earnings and more focus
> on long term earnings
> - more real owners
> - day trading not so fashionable
> result in more long term planning
> * lots of big companies (MS rules the small company world)
> * tradition of listening to the people at the floor
> * strong starting position (both in general and at universities) back
> in the 80's and 90's
> * the do as everybody else philosophy works both ways: if
> no one is leaving VMS then no one is thinking about it

Here is another possible explanation: early adopters of new 
technology/high tech country.

What would you have choose in the late 70s/early 80s?
DOS 1.0?
Unix?
RDOS?
MVS?

I'd say, at that time, DEC was the company you went to. Later adopters 
of technology would probably have started looking more at Unix, and even 
later, Windows.

	Johnny

On Feb 3, 4:21=A0pm, Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> wrote:
> Here is another possible explanation: early adopters of new
> technology/high tech country.
>
> What would you have choose in the late 70s/early 80s?
> DOS 1.0?
> Unix?
> RDOS?
> MVS?

That all depends on what you needed and how much money you had. MVS,
VM/370, VMS and Unix were all valid options for large-scale multiuser
systems. CP/M (and later MS-DOS) were both valid choices for a small
business, as was the Apple II. If you were using a Nova or a small
Eclipse to run lab equipment, RDOS was even still an option, though if
you were running anything larger, I'm sure that DG would be trying to
sell you on AOS. Really that's the beauty of that era, no matter what
your needs were, there was a system out there that fit it.

Mike

Johnny Billquist <bqt@softjar.se> wrote:

(snip)
> What would you have choose in the late 70s/early 80s?
> DOS 1.0?
> Unix?
> RDOS?
> MVS?

For small computers it was CP/M for a long time.
I have an Epson QX-10 dating to about 1984. (Now, to get
it running again.)

Otherwise, there was Data General for minicomputers, 
Nova on the low end, Eclipse on the higher end.
IBM with various system, System/7, System/1, System/38.
Xerox/Sigma, and HP with the HP-1000, HP-21xx, HP-3000.

Apple II for home, and some laboratory use. Also, Commodore
had some lab-style machines before the VIC-20 and C-64 for
home use.

> I'd say, at that time, DEC was the company you went to. Later adopters 
> of technology would probably have started looking more at Unix, 
> and even later, Windows.

-- glen

On 2/3/2012 2:25 PM, A. W. Dunstan wrote:
> Interesting.  One of my reasons for asking was that I so rarely hear mention
> of VMS (outside this newsgroup, anyway).  No ads looking for programmers or
> sysadmins, certainly no ads encouraging people to give it a try&  see how
> good it is.  Not much point in listing it on my resume...sigh...

Relative few jobs with employees that are not very likely to change jobs
means very few job ads.

Arne

glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:
> Johnny Billquist <bqt@softjar.se> wrote:
> 
> (snip)
>> What would you have choose in the late 70s/early 80s?
>> DOS 1.0?
>> Unix?
>> RDOS?
>> MVS?
> 
> For small computers it was CP/M for a long time.
> I have an Epson QX-10 dating to about 1984. (Now, to get
> it running again.)
> 
> Otherwise, there was Data General for minicomputers, 
> Nova on the low end, Eclipse on the higher end.
> IBM with various system, System/7, System/1, System/38.
> Xerox/Sigma, and HP with the HP-1000, HP-21xx, HP-3000.
> 
> Apple II for home, and some laboratory use. Also, Commodore
> had some lab-style machines before the VIC-20 and C-64 for
> home use.

Back around 1992 I went to school at Iomega corp.
They used a C-64 on testing their read-write heads.
A very low cost solution.

On Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:39:32 -0500, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

> On 2/3/2012 2:25 PM, A. W. Dunstan wrote:
>> Interesting.  One of my reasons for asking was that I so rarely hear
>> mention of VMS (outside this newsgroup, anyway).  No ads looking for
>> programmers or sysadmins, certainly no ads encouraging people to give
>> it a try&  see how good it is.  Not much point in listing it on my
>> resume...sigh...
> 
> Relative few jobs with employees that are not very likely to change jobs
> means very few job ads.
> 

I came across this one in 1997 from a job agency

"Why don't you VMS people want to change jobs?"

My answer was that we were generally happy in our jobs.

-- 
Paul Sture

On 2/3/2012 4:21 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2012-02-03 03.17, Arne Vajh�j wrote:
>> On 2/2/2012 12:30 AM, JohnF wrote:
>>> Jan-Erik Soderholm<jan-erik.soderholm@telia.com> wrote:
>>>> A. W. Dunstan wrote 2012-02-01 19:30:
>>>>> Just curious...
>>>>> Does anyone do any development of software to run on it?
>>>>
>>>> I do. COBOL and Rdb.
>>>> B.t.w, Sweden has a few large VMS users. Swedish users regulary
>>>> sends aprox 20 attendents to the OpenVMS Bootcamp. About the
>>>> same number as the rest of Europe together... :-) Jan-Erik.
>>>
>>> Also just curious... what would you say explains Swedish VMS
>>> usage? As Arne mentioned, US managers have all migrated long
>>> ago, unless impractical. So I suppose there's some different
>>> kind of managerial/business-analysis thinking in Sweden that
>>> keeps VMS a viable platform. Could you elaborate about that?
>>> I'd be interested in any reasonable (not religious/strident)
>>> arguments to keep it going.
>>
>> There are probably many reasons.
>>
>> Some guesses:
>> * less focus on next quarters earnings and more focus
>> on long term earnings
>> - more real owners
>> - day trading not so fashionable
>> result in more long term planning
>> * lots of big companies (MS rules the small company world)
>> * tradition of listening to the people at the floor
>> * strong starting position (both in general and at universities) back
>> in the 80's and 90's
>> * the do as everybody else philosophy works both ways: if
>> no one is leaving VMS then no one is thinking about it
>
> Here is another possible explanation: early adopters of new
> technology/high tech country.

Any different from other countries in the western world??

Arne

On 2/2/2012 7:35 PM, Subcommandante XDelta wrote:
> Come the revolution, VMS Engineering is moved back out of India, and
> any of the quality (spine, character and technical skills) are given
> the green card treatment, commensurate and proportionate salaries and
> the opportunity to taste the Actual American "dream."

I think you will need to find a parallel universe.

Arne

On 2/3/2012 12:08 AM, JF Mezei wrote:
> Arne Vajh�j wrote:
>> It is my understanding that indians has been working on VMS
>> for many many years.
>
> That is correct. But most of the indian's work has been maintenance,
> recompiling VMS applciations for new version of VMS (for instance, they
> have had TPU/EVE for many years and haven't done anything except
> recompile it).
>
> There may have been a few highly experienced guys with abilities such as
> Clustering over IP. But this small core wouldn't be able to handle all
> of the VMS core/kernel.
>
> And HP has been quite adament that nobody should compare the indian
> staffing levels to staffing levels of the real VMS engineering. So we
> have no idea if they replaced the real vms engineers with more or fewer
> untrained newbie indians.

As far as I know then you have never worked in VMS engineering.

I seem to remember people that did work in VMS engineering
not share your opinions.

Arne

Phillip Helbig---undress to reply <helbig@astro.multiclothesvax.de> wrote:
> JohnF <john@please.see.sig.for.email.com> writes: 
> 
>> >> Also just curious... what would you say explains Swedish VMS
>> >> usage? As Arne mentioned, US managers have all migrated long
>> >> ago, unless impractical. So I suppose there's some different
>> >> kind of managerial/business-analysis thinking in Sweden that
>> >> keeps VMS a viable platform. Could you elaborate about that?
>> >> I'd be interested in any reasonable (not religious/strident)
>> >> arguments to keep it going. Thanks,
>> > 
>> > While I'm sure Jan-Erik can say much more about this than I
>> > can, it is certainly the case in Sweden that the difference
>> > between the managers and those at the bottom of the totem
>> > pole is less than about anywhere else in the world, however
>> > this difference is measured. That might have something to
>> > do with it.
>> 
>> Thanks, Phillip, very interesting conjecture indeed. Too bad
>> there's no way in heck that'll ever happen in the USA. I was
>> hoping for something that would be applicable here (New York
>> City). I guess your underlying idea is that the "underlings"
>> who actually know what's what, also have some say about what
>> happens. ...<thinking>... nope, I don't see how that'll ever
>> happen here, either:)
>> 
>> > But the real mystery question is whether your flush-right
>> > paragraph is a coincidence or is intentional.
>> That would be telling.
> 
> I've seen people flesh out text with extra spaces (SMS's HELP
> files for ZIP and UNZIP come to mind), but yours have no extra
> spaces. Which is it:
>   o  You have WAY too much time on your hands.
>   o  You have a nifty DCL routine to do it.
>   o  You're a wizard.
>   o  Other.

All the above? -- sadly the first, plenty of the second,
modestly (or not so much) the third, and everybody's the
fourth. As for the first, I'd hazard everyone in this ng
has that -- ditto second and fourth, perhaps third, too.
-- 
John Forkosh  ( mailto:  j@f.com  where j=john and f=forkosh )

Arne Vajh?j <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:
> JohnF wrote:
>> Jan-Erik Soderholm<jan-erik.soderholm@telia.com>  wrote:
>>> A. W. Dunstan wrote 2012-02-01 19:30:
>>>> Just curious...
>>>> Does anyone do any development of software to run on it?
>>>
>>> I do. COBOL and Rdb.
>>> B.t.w, Sweden has a few large VMS users. Swedish users regulary
>>> sends aprox 20 attendents to the OpenVMS Bootcamp. About the
>>> same number as the rest of Europe together... :-)  Jan-Erik.
>>
>> Also just curious... what would you say explains Swedish VMS
>> usage? As Arne mentioned, US managers have all migrated long
>> ago, unless impractical. So I suppose there's some different
>> kind of managerial/business-analysis thinking in Sweden that
>> keeps VMS a viable platform. Could you elaborate about that?
>> I'd be interested in any reasonable (not religious/strident)
>> arguments to keep it going.
> 
> There are probably many reasons.
> Some guesses:
> * less focus on next quarters earnings and more focus
>   on long term earnings
>   - more real owners
>   - day trading not so fashionable
>   result in more long term planning
> * lots of big companies (MS rules the small company world)
> * tradition of listening to the people at the floor
> * strong starting position (both in general and at
>   universities) back in the 80's and 90's
> * the do as everybody else philosophy works both ways: if
>   no one is leaving VMS then no one is thinking about it
> Arne

Thanks, Arne. To keep things together, let me cut-and-paste
Phillip's remarks...
> > While I'm sure Jan-Erik can say much more about this than I
> > can, it is certainly the case in Sweden that the difference
> > between the managers and those at the bottom of the totem
> > pole is less than about anywhere else in the world, however
> > this difference is measured. That might have something to
> > do with it.
>
> Thanks, Phillip, very interesting conjecture indeed. Too bad
> there's no way in heck that'll ever happen in the USA. I was
> hoping for something that would be applicable here (New York
> City). I guess your underlying idea is that the "underlings"
> who actually know what's what, also have some say about what
> happens. ...<thinking>... nope, I don't see how that'll ever
> happen here, either:)

And also Johnny's remarks...
> Johnny Billquist...
> Here is another possible explanation: early adopters of new
> technology/high tech country.
> What would you have choose in the late 70s/early 80s?
> DOS 1.0?                                                                      
> Unix?                                                                         
> RDOS?
> MVS?
> I'd say, at that time, DEC was the company you went to.
> Later adopters of technology would probably have started
> looking more at Unix, and even later, Windows.

Johnny's point about VMS's demise seems the most obvious,
at least from my perspective watching it happen in the US.
Mostly price performance when Ken Olsen obstinately stuck
to his guns despite new cheaper, faster Unix workstations.
Distantly second, platform openness, that wasn't quite so
much an issue around 1990 when Digital's customer-centric
attitude made its proprietariness more acceptable.
   But that's past. What I'd be more interested in now is
reasonable, rational talking points, to dissuade managers
from further attrition/migration. And in some fantasyland
future similar talking points to promote new VMS adoption.
Unfortunately, from my experience the above remarks won't
succeed either way. VMS being good (or better or best) is
a necessary but far-from-sufficient condition to adopt it
or just not abandon it. Technical points notwithstanding,
it's got to be ported to x86-64 to stand any chance. Even
then it's very slim at best. Open-sourcing might remove a
"very", but still slim. And neither's happening anyway so
it's just a lost cause, as far as I can see. However, I'd
be delighted to hear any kind of rebuttal.
-- 
John Forkosh  ( mailto:  j@f.com  where j=john and f=forkosh )

Arne Vajh�j wrote:

> I seem to remember people that did work in VMS engineering
> not share your opinions.

They couldn't share them because they have been forbidden to comment on
the abilities and size of the new team in india.


We know that there were a few who did have experience with such such as
clustering over IP. But this says nothing on whether that group has
suffient EXPEREINECED resources to handle all of the VMS kernel,
clusteting, DCL etc. (not the type of bug that appeared in the DIRECTORY
command in 8.4)

When a coropoation makes such changes and refuses to brag about the new
team, it generally means that the new team has reduced capabilities, and
likely reduced headcount.

And this becomes a serious issue if you no longer have sufficient
experience within  group to lead a porting effort to the 8086.

On Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:53:59 +0000, Phillip Helbig---undress to reply
wrote:

> I've seen people flesh out text with extra spaces (SMS's HELP files for
> ZIP and UNZIP come to mind), but yours have no extra spaces.

Grr.  At one point I had a fellow system manager whose EDIT/TPU settings 
converted tabs to spaces.  He left a trail of files which looked as 
though they had been modified but in fact weren't.

-- 
Paul Sture

On Fri, 03 Feb 2012 22:21:35 +0100, Johnny Billquist wrote:

> Here is another possible explanation: early adopters of new
> technology/high tech country.
> 
> What would you have choose in the late 70s/early 80s? 
> DOS 1.0?
> Unix?
> RDOS?
> MVS?
> 
> I'd say, at that time, DEC was the company you went to. Later adopters
> of technology would probably have started looking more at Unix, and even
> later, Windows.

I chose VMS in 1980, when it was a new and exciting thing, and 
minicomputers were not only replacing mainframes (which I was working 
on), but providing a much lower cost platform for the many companies 
around then who had not really got into IT.



-- 
Paul Sture

On 2/4/2012 7:57 AM, Paul Sture wrote:
> On Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:53:59 +0000, Phillip Helbig---undress to reply
> wrote:
>> I've seen people flesh out text with extra spaces (SMS's HELP files for
>> ZIP and UNZIP come to mind), but yours have no extra spaces.
>
> Grr.  At one point I had a fellow system manager whose EDIT/TPU settings
> converted tabs to spaces.  He left a trail of files which looked as
> though they had been modified but in fact weren't.

He should have followed practice for the project.

But spaces is a lot more self contained than tabs.

Arne

On 2012-02-04 03.36, Arne Vajh�j wrote:
> On 2/3/2012 4:21 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>> On 2012-02-03 03.17, Arne Vajh�j wrote:
>>> On 2/2/2012 12:30 AM, JohnF wrote:
>>>> Jan-Erik Soderholm<jan-erik.soderholm@telia.com> wrote:
>>>>> A. W. Dunstan wrote 2012-02-01 19:30:
>>>>>> Just curious...
>>>>>> Does anyone do any development of software to run on it?
>>>>>
>>>>> I do. COBOL and Rdb.
>>>>> B.t.w, Sweden has a few large VMS users. Swedish users regulary
>>>>> sends aprox 20 attendents to the OpenVMS Bootcamp. About the
>>>>> same number as the rest of Europe together... :-) Jan-Erik.
>>>>
>>>> Also just curious... what would you say explains Swedish VMS
>>>> usage? As Arne mentioned, US managers have all migrated long
>>>> ago, unless impractical. So I suppose there's some different
>>>> kind of managerial/business-analysis thinking in Sweden that
>>>> keeps VMS a viable platform. Could you elaborate about that?
>>>> I'd be interested in any reasonable (not religious/strident)
>>>> arguments to keep it going.
>>>
>>> There are probably many reasons.
>>>
>>> Some guesses:
>>> * less focus on next quarters earnings and more focus
>>> on long term earnings
>>> - more real owners
>>> - day trading not so fashionable
>>> result in more long term planning
>>> * lots of big companies (MS rules the small company world)
>>> * tradition of listening to the people at the floor
>>> * strong starting position (both in general and at universities) back
>>> in the 80's and 90's
>>> * the do as everybody else philosophy works both ways: if
>>> no one is leaving VMS then no one is thinking about it
>>
>> Here is another possible explanation: early adopters of new
>> technology/high tech country.
>
> Any different from other countries in the western world??

That was the proposed explanation, yes. And one part of that reason was 
that labor costs in Sweden were so high, even back then. You really 
wanted to automate and computerize.
And we also had (have?) some fairly high tech stuff in Sweden that not 
all western world countries do, which also leads to being early adopters.

	Johnny

On 2/3/2012 6:21 PM, Paul Sture wrote:
> On Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:39:32 -0500, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 2/3/2012 2:25 PM, A. W. Dunstan wrote:
>>> Interesting.  One of my reasons for asking was that I so rarely hear
>>> mention of VMS (outside this newsgroup, anyway).  No ads looking for
>>> programmers or sysadmins, certainly no ads encouraging people to give
>>> it a try&   see how good it is.  Not much point in listing it on my
>>> resume...sigh...
>>
>> Relative few jobs with employees that are not very likely to change jobs
>> means very few job ads.
>>
>
> I came across this one in 1997 from a job agency
>
> "Why don't you VMS people want to change jobs?"
>
> My answer was that we were generally happy in our jobs.

Just the average age of VMS people and the geographical
distance between VMS sites is enough to reduce mobility.

Arne

On 2/4/2012 4:47 AM, JF Mezei wrote:
> Arne Vajh�j wrote:
>> I seem to remember people that did work in VMS engineering
>> not share your opinions.
>
> They couldn't share them because they have been forbidden to comment on
> the abilities and size of the new team in india.

Some did say that had very competent people.

> We know that there were a few who did have experience with such such as
> clustering over IP. But this says nothing on whether that group has
> suffient EXPEREINECED resources to handle all of the VMS kernel,
> clusteting, DCL etc. (not the type of bug that appeared in the DIRECTORY
> command in 8.4)
>
> When a coropoation makes such changes and refuses to brag about the new
> team, it generally means that the new team has reduced capabilities, and
> likely reduced headcount.

So your proof of your claim is the lack information that
contradicts it?

Hmm.

> And this becomes a serious issue if you no longer have sufficient
> experience within  group to lead a porting effort to the 8086.

It is impossible to port VMS to 8086.

The reason VMS is not ported to x86-64 is money not skills. If
they money was there they could get people with the skills.

Arne

On 2012-02-04, Arne Vajh�j <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:
> On 2/4/2012 4:47 AM, JF Mezei wrote:
>> Arne Vajh�j wrote:
>>> I seem to remember people that did work in VMS engineering
>>> not share your opinions.
>>
>> They couldn't share them because they have been forbidden to comment on
>> the abilities and size of the new team in india.
>
> Some did say that had very competent people.
>

It's a pity they were not assigned to producing the VMS patch kits after
responsibility for said patch kits was moved to India.

Simon.

PS: In case my point is too subtle: I don't subscribe to JF style
theories, but instead believe in taking a evidence based approach when
possible and there's now plenty of evidence with which the quality of
the VMS India team can be compared to the old Nashua VMS team.

PPS: And before anyone interprets this as a comment on a culture; it isn't.
It's an observation that the relocation of VMS engineering seems to have
been done too quickly/cheaply by HP. The same problems would have occurred
if responsibility had been handed to a inexperienced team based in the US.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world

On 2/4/2012 2:01 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2012-02-04 03.36, Arne Vajh�j wrote:
>> On 2/3/2012 4:21 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>>> On 2012-02-03 03.17, Arne Vajh�j wrote:
>>>> On 2/2/2012 12:30 AM, JohnF wrote:
>>>>> Jan-Erik Soderholm<jan-erik.soderholm@telia.com> wrote:
>>>>>> A. W. Dunstan wrote 2012-02-01 19:30:
>>>>>>> Just curious...
>>>>>>> Does anyone do any development of software to run on it?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I do. COBOL and Rdb.
>>>>>> B.t.w, Sweden has a few large VMS users. Swedish users regulary
>>>>>> sends aprox 20 attendents to the OpenVMS Bootcamp. About the
>>>>>> same number as the rest of Europe together... :-) Jan-Erik.
>>>>>
>>>>> Also just curious... what would you say explains Swedish VMS
>>>>> usage? As Arne mentioned, US managers have all migrated long
>>>>> ago, unless impractical. So I suppose there's some different
>>>>> kind of managerial/business-analysis thinking in Sweden that
>>>>> keeps VMS a viable platform. Could you elaborate about that?
>>>>> I'd be interested in any reasonable (not religious/strident)
>>>>> arguments to keep it going.
>>>>
>>>> There are probably many reasons.
>>>>
>>>> Some guesses:
>>>> * less focus on next quarters earnings and more focus
>>>> on long term earnings
>>>> - more real owners
>>>> - day trading not so fashionable
>>>> result in more long term planning
>>>> * lots of big companies (MS rules the small company world)
>>>> * tradition of listening to the people at the floor
>>>> * strong starting position (both in general and at universities) back
>>>> in the 80's and 90's
>>>> * the do as everybody else philosophy works both ways: if
>>>> no one is leaving VMS then no one is thinking about it
>>>
>>> Here is another possible explanation: early adopters of new
>>> technology/high tech country.
>>
>> Any different from other countries in the western world??
>
> That was the proposed explanation, yes. And one part of that reason was
> that labor costs in Sweden were so high, even back then. You really
> wanted to automate and computerize.
> And we also had (have?) some fairly high tech stuff in Sweden that not
> all western world countries do, which also leads to being early adopters.

I do not remember Sweden as being that much richer and
more advanced than Denmark, UK, Germany, France, US etc.,
but on the other side I was not that much in Sweden.

Arne

In article <4f2ddee5$0$283$14726298@news.sunsite.dk>,
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?= <arne@vajhoej.dk> writes: 

> >>> Here is another possible explanation: early adopters of new
> >>> technology/high tech country.
> >>
> >> Any different from other countries in the western world??
> >
> > That was the proposed explanation, yes. And one part of that reason was
> > that labor costs in Sweden were so high, even back then. You really
> > wanted to automate and computerize.
> > And we also had (have?) some fairly high tech stuff in Sweden that not
> > all western world countries do, which also leads to being early adopters.
> 
> I do not remember Sweden as being that much richer and
> more advanced than Denmark, UK, Germany, France, US etc.,
> but on the other side I was not that much in Sweden.

Richer?  Not necessarily, though more evenly distributed than the others
(except perhaps Denmark).  I don't know about Denmark, but people in the
other countries mentioned above tend to have much more fear of big
government than do the people in Sweden.  I think many things were 
computerized in Sweden long before they were in other countries.  There 
is not the fear of handing over information to the government and 
letting it be used in a variety of computerized contexts.  (The point 
isn't the information gathered; this is roughly similar in all 
countries.  However, in Sweden there is a) very good communication 
between various government agencies and b) information is by default 
public.  Things which are compulsory there are forbidden elsewhere.)

Arne Vajhøj wrote:

> On 2/4/2012 7:57 AM, Paul Sture wrote:
> > On Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:53:59 +0000, Phillip Helbig---undress to
> > reply wrote:
> > > I've seen people flesh out text with extra spaces (SMS's HELP
> > > files for ZIP and UNZIP come to mind), but yours have no extra
> > > spaces.
> > 
> > Grr.  At one point I had a fellow system manager whose EDIT/TPU
> > settings converted tabs to spaces.  He left a trail of files which
> > looked as though they had been modified but in fact weren't.
> 
> He should have followed practice for the project.
> 
> But spaces is a lot more self contained than tabs.
> 
> Arne

To be fair to Paul's colleague, he may well not have been aware. If his
TPU was set to _not_ use tabs and he opened a file to browse, unless he
used Gold/Q or Do QUIT instead of F10 or Ctrl-z, then the files could
be saved without him realising. I find it difficult to believe he did
an 'Eliminate Tabs' deliberately. If he did, however, he deserves any
opprobrium heaped upon him.

The Tab/Space conundrum is one of the reasons I asked for DIFF
/IG=WHITESPACE. Guy added it, God bless him. Unfortunately, I'm trapped
on VMS 7.3-2 so still don't get to use it :) Oh well.

Cheers - Dave

-- 

On Sat, 04 Feb 2012 20:01:01 +0100, Johnny Billquist wrote:

> That was the proposed explanation, yes. And one part of that reason was
> that labor costs in Sweden were so high, even back then. You really
> wanted to automate and computerize.
> And we also had (have?) some fairly high tech stuff in Sweden that not
> all western world countries do, which also leads to being early
> adopters.

I noticed the same in Switzerland in comparison with the UK.  The higher 
labour costs do drive investment in machinery.  This is perhaps most 
evident just observing the building / construction machinery in use.



-- 
Paul Sture

On 2012-02-05 02:44, Arne Vajh�j wrote:
> On 2/4/2012 2:01 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>> On 2012-02-04 03.36, Arne Vajh�j wrote:
>>> On 2/3/2012 4:21 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>>>> On 2012-02-03 03.17, Arne Vajh�j wrote:
>>>>> On 2/2/2012 12:30 AM, JohnF wrote:
>>>>>> Jan-Erik Soderholm<jan-erik.soderholm@telia.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> A. W. Dunstan wrote 2012-02-01 19:30:
>>>>>>>> Just curious...
>>>>>>>> Does anyone do any development of software to run on it?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I do. COBOL and Rdb.
>>>>>>> B.t.w, Sweden has a few large VMS users. Swedish users regulary
>>>>>>> sends aprox 20 attendents to the OpenVMS Bootcamp. About the
>>>>>>> same number as the rest of Europe together... :-) Jan-Erik.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Also just curious... what would you say explains Swedish VMS
>>>>>> usage? As Arne mentioned, US managers have all migrated long
>>>>>> ago, unless impractical. So I suppose there's some different
>>>>>> kind of managerial/business-analysis thinking in Sweden that
>>>>>> keeps VMS a viable platform. Could you elaborate about that?
>>>>>> I'd be interested in any reasonable (not religious/strident)
>>>>>> arguments to keep it going.
>>>>>
>>>>> There are probably many reasons.
>>>>>
>>>>> Some guesses:
>>>>> * less focus on next quarters earnings and more focus
>>>>> on long term earnings
>>>>> - more real owners
>>>>> - day trading not so fashionable
>>>>> result in more long term planning
>>>>> * lots of big companies (MS rules the small company world)
>>>>> * tradition of listening to the people at the floor
>>>>> * strong starting position (both in general and at universities) back
>>>>> in the 80's and 90's
>>>>> * the do as everybody else philosophy works both ways: if
>>>>> no one is leaving VMS then no one is thinking about it
>>>>
>>>> Here is another possible explanation: early adopters of new
>>>> technology/high tech country.
>>>
>>> Any different from other countries in the western world??
>>
>> That was the proposed explanation, yes. And one part of that reason was
>> that labor costs in Sweden were so high, even back then. You really
>> wanted to automate and computerize.
>> And we also had (have?) some fairly high tech stuff in Sweden that not
>> all western world countries do, which also leads to being early adopters.
>
> I do not remember Sweden as being that much richer and
> more advanced than Denmark, UK, Germany, France, US etc.,
> but on the other side I was not that much in Sweden.

Richer? Not sure where that come into this. I don't think anything I 
wrote should have led you to make that connection. As for 
technologically advanced, part of that was required by the long 
"tradition" of being self-reliant and neutral. I don't remember seeing 
any Danish manufactured fighter jets for instance. Since we had to do so 
many things ourself, we have (had) a fairly high technology level. That, 
in combination with the high labor costs (taxes anyone?) led to Swedish 
companies being very interested in automation and computerization very 
early. But Sweden have been in a decline since the 70s, I think.

"Why not visit Sweden this year. See the wonderful telephone system."
   -- Monthy Python

I remember when I was much younger, and having to talk with operators 
when making international calls. Very weird when being used to the fully 
automated telephone system in Sweden.

But I'm only trying to find explanations without actually have all the 
knowledge or information. Others are free to speculate and find other 
answers. :-)

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt@softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

On 2012-02-05 14:33, Paul Sture wrote:
> On Sat, 04 Feb 2012 20:01:01 +0100, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>
>> That was the proposed explanation, yes. And one part of that reason was
>> that labor costs in Sweden were so high, even back then. You really
>> wanted to automate and computerize.
>> And we also had (have?) some fairly high tech stuff in Sweden that not
>> all western world countries do, which also leads to being early
>> adopters.
>
> I noticed the same in Switzerland in comparison with the UK.  The higher
> labour costs do drive investment in machinery.  This is perhaps most
> evident just observing the building / construction machinery in use.

Good point. Switzerland is actually similar to Sweden in many ways 
(although not all). And I accidentally moved to Switzerland from Sweden. :-)

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt@softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

On Sat, 04 Feb 2012 18:02:13 -0500, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

> On 2/3/2012 6:21 PM, Paul Sture wrote:
>> On Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:39:32 -0500, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>> On 2/3/2012 2:25 PM, A. W. Dunstan wrote:
>>>> Interesting.  One of my reasons for asking was that I so rarely hear
>>>> mention of VMS (outside this newsgroup, anyway).  No ads looking for
>>>> programmers or sysadmins, certainly no ads encouraging people to give
>>>> it a try&   see how good it is.  Not much point in listing it on my
>>>> resume...sigh...
>>>
>>> Relative few jobs with employees that are not very likely to change
>>> jobs means very few job ads.
>>>
>>>
>> I came across this one in 1997 from a job agency
>>
>> "Why don't you VMS people want to change jobs?"
>>
>> My answer was that we were generally happy in our jobs.
> 
> Just the average age of VMS people and the geographical distance between
> VMS sites is enough to reduce mobility.

Quite possibly back then. Even more so now.

-- 
Paul Sture

On Sun, 05 Feb 2012 12:56:50 +0000, David Weatherall wrote:

> Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> 
>> On 2/4/2012 7:57 AM, Paul Sture wrote:
>> > On Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:53:59 +0000, Phillip Helbig---undress to reply
>> > wrote:
>> > > I've seen people flesh out text with extra spaces (SMS's HELP files
>> > > for ZIP and UNZIP come to mind), but yours have no extra spaces.
>> > 
>> > Grr.  At one point I had a fellow system manager whose EDIT/TPU
>> > settings converted tabs to spaces.  He left a trail of files which
>> > looked as though they had been modified but in fact weren't.
>> 
>> He should have followed practice for the project.
>> 
>> But spaces is a lot more self contained than tabs.
>> 
>> Arne
> 
> To be fair to Paul's colleague, he may well not have been aware. If his
> TPU was set to _not_ use tabs and he opened a file to browse, unless he
> used Gold/Q or Do QUIT instead of F10 or Ctrl-z, then the files could be
> saved without him realising. I find it difficult to believe he did an
> 'Eliminate Tabs' deliberately. If he did, however, he deserves any
> opprobrium heaped upon him.

It was something of a culture clash with someone from a different 
division who got transferred in.

> The Tab/Space conundrum is one of the reasons I asked for DIFF
> /IG=WHITESPACE. Guy added it, God bless him. Unfortunately, I'm trapped
> on VMS 7.3-2 so still don't get to use it :) Oh well.
> 

Did that only arrive in 8.n?

Spaces give more consistent output for printing, especially in the case 
of compiler listings, but for system management stuff I used to stick 
with tabs (which feature in SYLOGICALS.TEMPLATE, for example).

-- 
Paul Sture

On Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:01:51 +0100, Johnny Billquist wrote:

> On 2012-02-05 14:33, Paul Sture wrote:
>> On Sat, 04 Feb 2012 20:01:01 +0100, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>>
>>> That was the proposed explanation, yes. And one part of that reason
>>> was that labor costs in Sweden were so high, even back then. You
>>> really wanted to automate and computerize.
>>> And we also had (have?) some fairly high tech stuff in Sweden that not
>>> all western world countries do, which also leads to being early
>>> adopters.
>>
>> I noticed the same in Switzerland in comparison with the UK.  The
>> higher labour costs do drive investment in machinery.  This is perhaps
>> most evident just observing the building / construction machinery in
>> use.
> 
> Good point. Switzerland is actually similar to Sweden in many ways
> (although not all). And I accidentally moved to Switzerland from Sweden.
> :-)

I'll admit I don't know much about Sweden, but referring back to a 
previous comment about management styles, things can be quite democratic 
in Switzerland.

-- 
Paul Sture

On Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:59:15 +0100, Johnny Billquist wrote:

> Richer? Not sure where that come into this. I don't think anything I
> wrote should have led you to make that connection. As for
> technologically advanced, part of that was required by the long
> "tradition" of being self-reliant and neutral. I don't remember seeing
> any Danish manufactured fighter jets for instance. Since we had to do so
> many things ourself, we have (had) a fairly high technology level. That,
> in combination with the high labor costs (taxes anyone?) led to Swedish
> companies being very interested in automation and computerization very
> early. But Sweden have been in a decline since the 70s, I think.

I don't think you should underestimate the influence of being neutral.  
Switzerland for example still has heavy farming subsidies which date back 
to WW II when it was surrounded (as was Sweden then).

> "Why not visit Sweden this year. See the wonderful telephone system."
>    -- Monthy Python
> 
> I remember when I was much younger, and having to talk with operators
> when making international calls. Very weird when being used to the fully
> automated telephone system in Sweden.

I was pleasantly surprised by the French telephone system when I got 
there in the early 1980s.  In my schooldays the French system had been 
regarded as a joke, but by the time I arrived they had modernised it, and 
it was a far superior system to the UK one at the time.

As late as 1976 (and maybe later) there were places in the UK that you 
could only reach by calling the operator and asking them to connect you.

-- 
Paul Sture

Paul Sture wrote:

> On Sun, 05 Feb 2012 12:56:50 +0000, David Weatherall wrote:
> 
> > Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> > 
> >> On 2/4/2012 7:57 AM, Paul Sture wrote:
> >> > On Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:53:59 +0000, Phillip Helbig---undress to
> reply >> > wrote:
> >> > > I've seen people flesh out text with extra spaces (SMS's HELP
> files >> > > for ZIP and UNZIP come to mind), but yours have no extra
> spaces.  >> > 
> >> > Grr.  At one point I had a fellow system manager whose EDIT/TPU
> >> > settings converted tabs to spaces.  He left a trail of files
> which >> > looked as though they had been modified but in fact
> weren't.  >> 
> >> He should have followed practice for the project.
> >> 
> >> But spaces is a lot more self contained than tabs.
> >> 
> >> Arne
> > 
> > To be fair to Paul's colleague, he may well not have been aware. If
> > his TPU was set to not use tabs and he opened a file to browse,
> > unless he used Gold/Q or Do QUIT instead of F10 or Ctrl-z, then the
> > files could be saved without him realising. I find it difficult to
> > believe he did an 'Eliminate Tabs' deliberately. If he did,
> > however, he deserves any opprobrium heaped upon him.
> 
> It was something of a culture clash with someone from a different 
> division who got transferred in.
> 
> > The Tab/Space conundrum is one of the reasons I asked for DIFF
> > /IG=WHITESPACE. Guy added it, God bless him. Unfortunately, I'm
> > trapped on VMS 7.3-2 so still don't get to use it :) Oh well.
> > 
> 
> Did that only arrive in 8.n?
> 
> Spaces give more consistent output for printing, especially in the
> case of compiler listings, but for system management stuff I used to
> stick with tabs (which feature in SYLOGICALS.TEMPLATE, for example)

I agree. I use tabs as much as a result of the space saved on an RK05
:) as much as anything else. It is also a nice and easy way of getting
a consistent indent. When coding (Fortran or DCL or even C/Pascal) tabs
to the comments mean that changing code indent levels doesn't mean
realigning the comment fields. One of the reaons I cursed a colleague
who had the same TPU bahaviour as yours :)

Guy implemented '/ig-white' in V8.? He was going to get it back into
7.3-2 but it isn't there on our machines. Pity!

 
-- 

Cheers - Dave

David Weatherall <nospam@nowheren.no.how> wrote:

(snip)
> I agree. I use tabs as much as a result of the space saved on an RK05
> :) as much as anything else. It is also a nice and easy way of getting
> a consistent indent. When coding (Fortran or DCL or even C/Pascal) tabs
> to the comments mean that changing code indent levels doesn't mean
> realigning the comment fields. One of the reaons I cursed a colleague
> who had the same TPU bahaviour as yours :)

I don't mind tabs in C, where they are part of the standard,
but they are not allowed in standard Fortran. Their use has caused
many questions in comp.lang.fortran where programs didn't
work as expected.

-- glen

On Feb 6, 2:55=A0pm, glen herrmannsfeldt <g...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> David Weatherall <nos...@nowheren.no.how> wrote:
>
> (snip)
>
> > I agree. I use tabs as much as a result of the space saved on an RK05
> > :) as much as anything else. It is also a nice and easy way of getting
> > a consistent indent. When coding (Fortran or DCL or even C/Pascal) tabs
> > to the comments mean that changing code indent levels doesn't mean
> > realigning the comment fields. One of the reaons I cursed a colleague
> > who had the same TPU bahaviour as yours :)
>
> I don't mind tabs in C, where they are part of the standard,
> but they are not allowed in standard Fortran. Their use has caused
> many questions in comp.lang.fortran where programs didn't
> work as expected.
>
> -- glen

I believe that tabs ARE allowed in fortran, just not in the free form.
The use of tabs was quite common for F77 source. This would place the
statement within the correct "columns" for fixed source eliminating
the 6 spaces normally required to get past the line number and
continuation areas.  Please note that F90 and beyond typically avoid
this.

I think it is the combination of tabs and spaces that caused
confuision.  I know that I often "solved" problems at client sites by
making the use of spacing consistant.

Dan

On Monday, February 6, 2012 12:37:42 PM UTC-8, abrsvc wrote:
> On Feb 6, 2:55=A0pm, glen herrmannsfeldt <g...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
[...]
> > I don't mind tabs in C, where they are part of the standard,
> > but they are not allowed in standard Fortran. Their use has caused
> > many questions in comp.lang.fortran where programs didn't
> > work as expected.

> I believe that tabs ARE allowed in fortran, just not in the free form.

If anything, they were/are disallowed in FIXED source
form.  In principle, they'd be no problem in free source
form where white-space is significant (as opposed to the
rules for fixed source form).

I don't have the standard to hand, but IIRC tabs are
still an extension in statements (again, as opposed
to comments and/or character literals).  But as noted
above, they are unlikely to cause any problems in=20
"modern" free source form.

> The use of tabs was quite common for F77 source. This would place the
> statement within the correct "columns" for fixed source eliminating
> the 6 spaces normally required to get past the line number and
> continuation areas.  Please note that F90 and beyond typically avoid
> this.

Try posting this to comp.lang.fortran and I think you'll
find a very different reaction from the knowledgeable/
old-timers there...  The treatment of tabs in statements
(as opposed to comments) could be very problematic.  Even
on VMS.

I recall being incredibly puzzled by a fellow student's code
which would fail to compile after I made minor edits.  His
code was making use of a VMS (ne VAX) Fortran extension that
counted a tab in column 1 as a single character against the
80 character card imagelimit, so he could, using EDT, run his
statements all the way to column 80 on a terminal screen.

I was, on the other hand, using Wylvax, a line-by-line
editor, which would convert tabs to blanks on exit (or
at least, in the lines I edited).  All of a sudden,=20
statements were truncated without an apparent visual
cue.

    -Ken

Johnny Billquist schrieb:

> 
> But Sweden have been in a decline since the 70s, I think.
> 


was that before or after Abba?

abrsvc <dansabrservices@yahoo.com> wrote:

(snip)

> I believe that tabs ARE allowed in fortran, just not in the free form.
> The use of tabs was quite common for F77 source. This would place the
> statement within the correct "columns" for fixed source eliminating
> the 6 spaces normally required to get past the line number and
> continuation areas.  Please note that F90 and beyond typically avoid
> this.

It is worse. Last I remember, the DEC compilers accepted tabs,
moved to column 8, but counted it as column 7. Since fixed form
ends at column 72, it is very confusing to have different
columns after a tab.

> I think it is the combination of tabs and spaces that caused
> confuision.  I know that I often "solved" problems at client sites by
> making the use of spacing consistant.

The Fortran standards, any version, do not make any allowance
for tabs in either programs or input data. Implementations might
allow it as an extension, as DEC did.

-- glen

On 2012-02-03 22.39, Mike K. wrote:
> On Feb 3, 4:21 pm, Johnny Billquist<b...@softjar.se>  wrote:
>> Here is another possible explanation: early adopters of new
>> technology/high tech country.
>>
>> What would you have choose in the late 70s/early 80s?
>> DOS 1.0?
>> Unix?
>> RDOS?
>> MVS?
>
> That all depends on what you needed and how much money you had. MVS,
> VM/370, VMS and Unix were all valid options for large-scale multiuser
> systems. CP/M (and later MS-DOS) were both valid choices for a small
> business, as was the Apple II. If you were using a Nova or a small
> Eclipse to run lab equipment, RDOS was even still an option, though if
> you were running anything larger, I'm sure that DG would be trying to
> sell you on AOS. Really that's the beauty of that era, no matter what
> your needs were, there was a system out there that fit it.

Late 70s, early 80s were not a time for Unix. It was still very hard to 
even get hold of if you weren't academia, as well as being rather 
immature. It had recently been ported to the VAX, but was still rather 
poor both in features and performance compared to VMS.
MVS and other offerings from IBM was something that was so batch 
oriented that it worked for specific customers, but every new business 
case meant major development of various components, as well as not 
really suitable for a lot of new, interactive, more real time type of 
applications.

CP/M did exist, and was sometimes usable. One big problem was that the 
hardware you had for those kind of systems were horrible when it came to 
reliability. Apple II had the same kind of problems. It was ok to use in 
an office with controlled and friendly environment, on your desk. But 
that is not where a lot of things were happening back then.

I wonder if AOS had even came to market at that time. Didn't RDOS also 
exist in a version for the Eclipse? Anyway, the Eclipse was not a nice 
machine (in my opinion), and never really took off. Nova was DGs big 
success, and it was definitely an option. But RDOS was not that good.

There were definitely a lot of systems out there back then, but not 
really many that were that good. Many of them came and went in a very 
short time.

	Johnny

On Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:44:37 +0000, David Weatherall wrote:

> Paul Sture wrote:
> 
>> 
>> Spaces give more consistent output for printing, especially in the case
>> of compiler listings, but for system management stuff I used to stick
>> with tabs (which feature in SYLOGICALS.TEMPLATE, for example)
> 
> I agree. I use tabs as much as a result of the space saved on an RK05 :)
> as much as anything else. It is also a nice and easy way of getting a
> consistent indent. When coding (Fortran or DCL or even C/Pascal) tabs to
> the comments mean that changing code indent levels doesn't mean
> realigning the comment fields. One of the reasons I cursed a colleague
> who had the same TPU behaviour as yours :)

COBOL comment sections which ended up with an asterisk in column 79 (or 
80?) fell into that category too.

Another reason for using tabs was the Digital COBOL "Terminal Format" for 
sources.  A leading tab on a source line was much faster to bash in than 
the traditional format of x spaces (a doddle of course on a card punch 
with tabs set up for COBOL source), which you had to count carefully to 
avoid the compiler throwing a fit.  There was a utility to convert 
between the two formats, making it easy to see the space "wasted" using 
the traditional format (aka ANSI IIRC), and that also applied to RM05s.

You had to select this conversion utility at compiler installation time. 
Another source of woe was that the installation procedure defaulted to 
not installing it, so if you were working on someone else's machine it 
might not be there.

> Guy implemented '/ig-white' in V8.? He was going to get it back into
> 7.3-2 but it isn't there on our machines. Pity!

I was sure there was another way.  Perhaps it's brain fade.  If it had 
been too time consuming I would have written some DCL using f$edit to 
collapse multiple spaces and tabs and compare the results.

-- 
Paul Sture

On Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:25:43 +0100, Johnny Billquist wrote:

> Late 70s, early 80s were not a time for Unix. It was still very hard to
> even get hold of if you weren't academia, as well as being rather
> immature. It had recently been ported to the VAX, but was still rather
> poor both in features and performance compared to VMS.

I remember asking whether Unix should be considered when we were looking 
at new systems in the late 1970s and was given a firm "No", on the 
grounds of cost and/or availability.

Then there was the somewhat later story, perhaps apocryphal, of someone 
who upon learning that his bank was implementing Unix systems, took all 
but one dollar out of his account there. When asked why, he said that he 
wanted to minimise his risk when the file system garbled everything, but 
was prepared to risk a dollar in the event that he suddenly found himself 
with several thousand in his account :-)

> MVS and other offerings from IBM was something that was so batch
> oriented that it worked for specific customers, but every new business
> case meant major development of various components, as well as not
> really suitable for a lot of new, interactive, more real time type of
> applications.

We said no to ICL because they wanted us to go with a system which only 
supported batch.  The service we could offer with our existing PDP 
solution meant we could guarantee delivery of replacement parts to any 
dealer in the UK by 9:00 am the following day as long as we received the 
order by our cut off time in the afternoon. The cut off time was 
something like 14:00, but for one-off emergencies we could extend that to 
about 15 minutes before the daily pickup at 16:00.

We could not have offered that service using an overnight batch system. 
Emergency orders could have stretched to more like 48 hours turnaround.

-- 
Paul Sture

On Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:09:35 +0100, Michael Kraemer wrote:

> Johnny Billquist schrieb:
> 
> 
>> But Sweden have been in a decline since the 70s, I think.
> 
> was that before or after Abba?

Probably before and during Abba:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Sweden#Post-war_era

"Sweden, like countries around the globe, entered a period of economic 
decline and upheaval, following the oil embargoes of 1973–74 and 1978–79.

In the 1980s pillars of Swedish industry were massively restructured. 
Shipbuilding was discontinued, wood pulp was integrated into modernized 
paper production, the steel industry was concentrated and specialized, 
and mechanical engineering was robotized."

-- 
Paul Sture

In article <9paot5FvjsU1@mid.individual.net>, "David Weatherall" <nospam@nowheren.no.how> writes:
> Paul Sture wrote:
>> 
>> Spaces give more consistent output for printing, especially in the
>> case of compiler listings, but for system management stuff I used to
>> stick with tabs (which feature in SYLOGICALS.TEMPLATE, for example)

   Spaces give more consistent output only when you work with people
   or software that forgets that printers are set up to do tabs every
   8 columns.  Honor that standard and you'll have little trouble with
   tab based spacing.

> I agree. I use tabs as much as a result of the space saved on an RK05
> :) as much as anything else. It is also a nice and easy way of getting
> a consistent indent. When coding (Fortran or DCL or even C/Pascal) tabs
> to the comments mean that changing code indent levels doesn't mean
> realigning the comment fields. One of the reaons I cursed a colleague
> who had the same TPU bahaviour as yours :)

   DEC Fortran tab-format is a time saver.  And when you had folks
   writing 120,000 lines of Fortran, that added up.  I wonder if ANSI
   never adopted it (DEC submitted it) because of all the folks who
   had trouble with stuff that didn't honor the modulo-8 tabs?

Bob Koehler <koehler@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org> wrote:

(snip)
>   Spaces give more consistent output only when you work with people
>   or software that forgets that printers are set up to do tabs every
>   8 columns.  Honor that standard and you'll have little trouble with
>   tab based spacing.

(snip)
>   DEC Fortran tab-format is a time saver.  And when you had folks
>   writing 120,000 lines of Fortran, that added up.  I wonder if ANSI
>   never adopted it (DEC submitted it) because of all the folks who
>   had trouble with stuff that didn't honor the modulo-8 tabs?

For me, the problem was that tab went to column 8, but counted
it as column 7, or, if the first character was numeric, column 6.
(I believe that is right, I haven't actually done this
for many years.) Given that, converting tabs to blanks could
result in invalid Fortran statements.

As noted in a post on COBOL, card keypunches had a SKIP key,
when used with the appropriate control card, let you skip
quickly to column 7. It didn't punch a tab key on the card.

The system I used even before VAX/VMS existed, WYLBUR, allowed
tabs to be used for data entry and terminal output, but normally
didn't store them in the file. The WYLBUR internal file format
compresses out blanks, so they don't take more space than tabs.
They are expanded to blanks before sending to the compiler.

The comes up sometimes in comp.lang.fortran. I believe that
even through Fortran 2008 tabs haven't been included in
the standard. Most compilers don't yet support all the features
of Fortran 2003.

-- glen

On Feb 7, 1:28=A0pm, glen herrmannsfeldt <g...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> Bob Koehler <koeh...@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org> wrote:
>
> (snip)
>
> > =A0 Spaces give more consistent output only when you work with people
> > =A0 or software that forgets that printers are set up to do tabs every
> > =A0 8 columns. =A0Honor that standard and you'll have little trouble wi=
th
> > =A0 tab based spacing.
>
> (snip)
>
> > =A0 DEC Fortran tab-format is a time saver. =A0And when you had folks
> > =A0 writing 120,000 lines of Fortran, that added up. =A0I wonder if ANS=
I
> > =A0 never adopted it (DEC submitted it) because of all the folks who
> > =A0 had trouble with stuff that didn't honor the modulo-8 tabs?
>
> For me, the problem was that tab went to column 8, but counted
> it as column 7, or, if the first character was numeric, column 6.
> (I believe that is right, I haven't actually done this
> for many years.) Given that, converting tabs to blanks could
> result in invalid Fortran statements.
>
> As noted in a post on COBOL, card keypunches had a SKIP key,
> when used with the appropriate control card, let you skip
> quickly to column 7. It didn't punch a tab key on the card.
>
> The system I used even before VAX/VMS existed, WYLBUR, allowed
> tabs to be used for data entry and terminal output, but normally
> didn't store them in the file. The WYLBUR internal file format
> compresses out blanks, so they don't take more space than tabs.
> They are expanded to blanks before sending to the compiler.
>
> The comes up sometimes in comp.lang.fortran. I believe that
> even through Fortran 2008 tabs haven't been included in
> the standard. Most compilers don't yet support all the features
> of Fortran 2003.
>
> -- glen

You are correct, the use of TABs was not a standard but an extension
that was supported by many compilers.  My error and mis-statement.
The confusion around where TAB brought the line in relation to
continuation characters etc for FORTRAN was a source for many
problems.  This was the case when inadvertantly both the TAB and
spacing was used.  Attempts to line up the code using spaces resulted
in errors.

Dan

In article <jgrqh0$iva$1@speranza.aioe.org>, glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> writes:
> 
> For me, the problem was that tab went to column 8, but counted
> it as column 7, or, if the first character was numeric, column 6.
> (I believe that is right, I haven't actually done this
> for many years.) Given that, converting tabs to blanks could
> result in invalid Fortran statements.

   There were a great many conversion utilities which knew this
   and would convert accordingly.  But if all your systems were
   DEC, or if ANSI had adopted it as a standard, you'ld have
   no problem.

   Later, HP-UX, Solaris, ..., all touted "VAX compatable Fortran",
   and they knew how to use DEC tab formatted code.  I beleive the
   current incarnation of gfortran also knows.

On Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:07:16 -0600, Bob Koehler wrote:

> In article <9paot5FvjsU1@mid.individual.net>, "David Weatherall"
> <nospam@nowheren.no.how> writes:
>> Paul Sture wrote:
>>> 
>>> Spaces give more consistent output for printing, especially in the
>>> case of compiler listings, but for system management stuff I used to
>>> stick with tabs (which feature in SYLOGICALS.TEMPLATE, for example)
> 
>    Spaces give more consistent output only when you work with people or
>    software that forgets that printers are set up to do tabs every 8
>    columns.  Honor that standard and you'll have little trouble with tab
>    based spacing.

I was thinking of the compilers available years ago.  I just compiled a 
terminal format COBOL program using an Alpha running VMS 8.3 and it 
appears from an examination of the listing that the tabs and spaces are 
in the right place for a decent printout.  The compiler actually outputs 
a tab in the first byte of each listing record, then the correct number 
of spaces before the compiler generated line number.

I must admit I don't have an LNO3 handy for the acid test of printing it 
out, but my neighbours are probably thankful for that :-)
 
>> I agree. I use tabs as much as a result of the space saved on an RK05
>> :) as much as anything else. It is also a nice and easy way of getting
>> a consistent indent. When coding (Fortran or DCL or even C/Pascal) tabs
>> to the comments mean that changing code indent levels doesn't mean
>> realigning the comment fields. One of the reaons I cursed a colleague
>> who had the same TPU bahaviour as yours :)
> 
>    DEC Fortran tab-format is a time saver.  And when you had folks
>    writing 120,000 lines of Fortran, that added up.  I wonder if ANSI
>    never adopted it (DEC submitted it) because of all the folks who had
>    trouble with stuff that didn't honor the modulo-8 tabs?

That time saving was also true with DEC COBOL "Terminal format".  I 
suspect other languages also benefited.

-- 
Paul Sture

On Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:28:48 +0000, glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:

> As noted in a post on COBOL, card keypunches had a SKIP key, when used
> with the appropriate control card, let you skip quickly to column 7. It
> didn't punch a tab key on the card.

The card keypunches I witnessed indeed did not generate a tab character; 
they just left empty spaces, much as an old fashioned typewriter would do.

-- 
Paul Sture

In article <jgpmjf$haj$1@solani.org>, Michael Kraemer <M.Kraemer@gsi.de>
writes: 

> Johnny Billquist schrieb:
> 
> > But Sweden have been in a decline since the 70s, I think.
> 
> was that before or after Abba?

Aaahhh yes, ABBA: all that youthful sexual energy enticingly packed in 
skin-tight lycra---and that's just the blokes!

I've never lived in Sweden, but I've spent about 8 months or so there
over the years.  The best time was probably about 1955--1975 (no, I
wasn't there then).  The country has a population of about 8 million,
and managed to produce Abba, Ericsson, (part of) ABB, SKF, SAAB, Volvo,
Marabou, IKEA, Husqvarna.  Sweden is still not a member of NATO and
joined the EU (by a very close vote) only in 1995 (and has managed to
avoid the common currency via a loophole (made use of in order to
conform to plebiscite results) which has since been closed for other 
countries).  It used to be a really interesting place.  Some of this 
still survives, for example the efficient bureaucracy which makes use of 
the "personal number" as a primary key, the idea that information is 
public by default (including every person's tax return---tax paid, 
income, savings), measuring wind speed in meters per second.  I don't 
know if it's still the case that telephone keypads are like computer 
keypads (i.e. low numbers at the bottom), not like telephone keypads in 
most of the rest of the world.

SAAB parallels Sweden in many ways: they used to be really innovative,
unique, immediately recognizable.  Starting around the time GM became
involved, quality dropped, there was little innovation, they looked like
many other cars.  I still enjoy being there and like many things about
it, but I think the era shaped by people like Tage Erlander is gone for
good. 

In article <jgs9c9$ibg$1@online.de>, helbig@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de
(Phillip Helbig---undress to reply) writes: 

> Aaahhh yes, ABBA: all that youthful sexual energy enticingly packed in 
> skin-tight lycra---and that's just the blokes!

> I still enjoy being there and like many things about
> it, but I think the era shaped by people like Tage Erlander is gone for
> good. 

I just realize that I mourn for Sweden like I mourn for DEC.  Nostalgia 
ain't what it used to be.

Bob Koehler wrote:

>    There were a great many conversion utilities which knew this
>    and would convert accordingly.  But if all your systems were
>    DEC, or if ANSI had adopted it as a standard, you'ld have
>    no problem.

My experience was with Cobol. VAX Cobol had a lot of flexibility in the
format of the code. (the language has rules about indentation to signify
that a portion "belongs" to the portion with less indentation etc)


When head office decided to adopt computers, they looked at ours and
were very impressed. Because DEC squandered the opportunity, Data
General won the contract. They were supplied with copies of some of our
programs and said that both the C and Cobol compiled cleanly without
changes.

Head office believed them and I was prevented from seeing the results.


DG cobol not only required strict indentation with spaces (no tabs) but
also that everything be uppercase.  And their version of cobol lacked
the report writer feature which our programs relied heavily on.


And interestingly, getting Cobol to call some of our C routines on DG
was hell whereas it was quite easy on VAX.


The morale of the story is that when you start to use vendor specific
features that make your life easier, you make it much harder to port
when that vendor screws you.

Phillip Helbig---undress to reply wrote:

> I just realize that I mourn for Sweden like I mourn for DEC.  Nostalgia 
> ain't what it used to be.


No reason to mourn Sweden. Check out the picture of Sweden's princess
Madeleine ...

http://www.dslreports.com/speak/slideshow/26841208?c=1724007&ret=L2ZvcnVtL3JlbWFyaywyNjg0MTIwOA%3D%3D



:-)

On Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:29:22 -0500, JF Mezei wrote:

> Phillip Helbig---undress to reply wrote:
> 
>> I just realize that I mourn for Sweden like I mourn for DEC.  Nostalgia
>> ain't what it used to be.
> 
> 
> No reason to mourn Sweden. Check out the picture of Sweden's princess
> Madeleine ...
> 
> http://www.dslreports.com/speak/slideshow/26841208?
c=1724007&ret=L2ZvcnVtL3JlbWFyaywyNjg0MTIwOA%3D%3D
> 
> :-)

Thank you for brightening up my morning :-)

-- 
Paul Sture

In article <31k809-gl9.ln1@news.sture.ch>, Paul Sture <paul@sture.ch> writes:
> On Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:28:48 +0000, glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:
> 
>> As noted in a post on COBOL, card keypunches had a SKIP key, when used
>> with the appropriate control card, let you skip quickly to column 7. It
>> didn't punch a tab key on the card.
> 
> The card keypunches I witnessed indeed did not generate a tab character; 
> they just left empty spaces, much as an old fashioned typewriter would do.

   IIRC, the SKIP key and TAB key were the same, or one in the location
   where you expected the other.

   I was one of the few programmers who knew how to program a drum card,
   and my drum card was set up for FORTRAN IV:  1 alphanumeric, 4
   numerics, one shifted key (I prefered # as my continuation
   character), more alphanumerics out to column 72, then numerics to the
   end of the card.

   It was so much more convenient to bang that skip key than to count
   spaces.

On Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:40:16 -0600, Bob Koehler wrote:

> In article <31k809-gl9.ln1@news.sture.ch>, Paul Sture <paul@sture.ch>
> writes:
>> On Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:28:48 +0000, glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:
>> 
>>> As noted in a post on COBOL, card keypunches had a SKIP key, when used
>>> with the appropriate control card, let you skip quickly to column 7.
>>> It didn't punch a tab key on the card.
>> 
>> The card keypunches I witnessed indeed did not generate a tab
>> character; they just left empty spaces, much as an old fashioned
>> typewriter would do.
> 
>    IIRC, the SKIP key and TAB key were the same, or one in the location
>    where you expected the other.
> 
>    I was one of the few programmers who knew how to program a drum card,
>    and my drum card was set up for FORTRAN IV:  1 alphanumeric, 4
>    numerics, one shifted key (I prefered # as my continuation
>    character), more alphanumerics out to column 72, then numerics to the
>    end of the card.
> 
>    It was so much more convenient to bang that skip key than to count
>    spaces.

I never programmed one of the punch machines but I did program some ICL 
workstations which mimicked them.  I never used #, since UK keyboards 
generated a £ instead (and guess what - not all printers could do that).

I also used a sleeker and lighter version of this handpunch, but that was 
either for correcting data cards or writing wrappers around data cards.

http://bit.ly/yL1451

It was surprising how quickly you could learn to use one of these, and at 
decent speed too.

-- 
Paul Sture

Bob Koehler <koehler@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org> wrote:

(snip, I wrote)
>>> As noted in a post on COBOL, card keypunches had a SKIP key, when used
>>> with the appropriate control card, let you skip quickly to column 7. It
>>> didn't punch a tab key on the card.
 
(snip)
>   IIRC, the SKIP key and TAB key were the same, or one in the location
>   where you expected the other.

Yes, I believe the key is SKIP and not TAB, but those using drum
cards knew what it did.

>   I was one of the few programmers who knew how to program a drum card,
>   and my drum card was set up for FORTRAN IV:  1 alphanumeric, 4
>   numerics, one shifted key (I prefered # as my continuation
>   character), more alphanumerics out to column 72, then numerics to the
>   end of the card.

I think I knew how to make one, but most of the time there
was already one there. As you note, it does a numeric shift
for column 6. Reminds me, once I tried to use / as a continuation
character, which would have been fine, except that with numeric
shift on it is instead 0. I think I even knew at the time that 0
does not indicate a continuation, but forgot that numeric
shift was on.

In addition to the usual numeric row at the top, there are also
ten keys in the shape of a numeric keypad, that are otherwise
non-numeric characters. (For the convenience of punching cards
with only numerical data. There is an Alpha shift key to override
the drum card shift, if you remember to use it.)

>   It was so much more convenient to bang that skip key than to count
>   spaces.

Yes, but it doesn't take long for your thumb to remember how
to count to six.

-- glen

On 2/8/2012 10:24 AM, Paul Sture wrote:
> On Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:40:16 -0600, Bob Koehler wrote:
>
>> In article<31k809-gl9.ln1@news.sture.ch>, Paul Sture<paul@sture.ch>
>> writes:
>>> On Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:28:48 +0000, glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:
>>>
>>>> As noted in a post on COBOL, card keypunches had a SKIP key, when used
>>>> with the appropriate control card, let you skip quickly to column 7.
>>>> It didn't punch a tab key on the card.
>>>
>>> The card keypunches I witnessed indeed did not generate a tab
>>> character; they just left empty spaces, much as an old fashioned
>>> typewriter would do.
>>
>>     IIRC, the SKIP key and TAB key were the same, or one in the location
>>     where you expected the other.
>>
>>     I was one of the few programmers who knew how to program a drum card,
>>     and my drum card was set up for FORTRAN IV:  1 alphanumeric, 4
>>     numerics, one shifted key (I prefered # as my continuation
>>     character), more alphanumerics out to column 72, then numerics to the
>>     end of the card.
>>
>>     It was so much more convenient to bang that skip key than to count
>>     spaces.
>
> I never programmed one of the punch machines but I did program some ICL

I did "program" a card punch once upon a time.  If you had the proper 
documentation, either on paper or in your head, it was easy.  I used to 
have the docs in my head but "bit decay" has taken its toll.  It has 
been almost thirty years since I last used a card punch.

> workstations which mimicked them.  I never used #, since UK keyboards
> generated a £ instead (and guess what - not all printers could do that).
>
> I also used a sleeker and lighter version of this handpunch, but that was
> either for correcting data cards or writing wrappers around data cards.
>
> http://bit.ly/yL1451
>
> It was surprising how quickly you could learn to use one of these, and at
> decent speed too.
>

Once you learn to touch type on a QWERTY keyboard the variations for 
card punch, teletype, and what not, are easy.

In article <omga09-und.ln1@news.sture.ch>, Paul Sture <paul@sture.ch> writes:
> 
> I never programmed one of the punch machines but I did program some ICL 
> workstations which mimicked them.  I never used #, since UK keyboards 
> generated a £ instead (and guess what - not all printers could do that).

   We had one elctronic card punch next to all our mechanical IBM 029s.

   Nobody used it.  When I looked into it, I found it pretty much
   required a "drum card", and would punch nonsense if not loaded with
   one.  I used it for a while with my Fortran specific drum card, but
   found it occasionally punched something different from what I typed.

   One of these led to an illegal combination punched into the card. 
   That caused an I/O error on the card reader, which in turn caused the
   OS input spooler to shut down.  The computer operators were not
   happy, restarting the input spooler was a real pain.  Rebooting
   took even longer.

Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote 2012-02-02 11:34:

>
> There is a large furniture 4-letter company that is a heavy
> VMS user.

> Every shop around the world has VMS systems and there
> is a large VMS center to run all backend processing.
>


And they are currently hiring for VMS work.

http://se.linkedin.com/jobs/jobs-System-Specialist-OpenVMS-2557424

Nice description of what they actualy use their VMS system for to.
A bit uncommon in job ads...

Jan-Erik.

On Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:58:49 +0100, Jan-Erik Soderholm
<jan-erik.soderholm@telia.com> wrote:

>Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote 2012-02-02 11:34:
>
>>
>> There is a large furniture 4-letter company that is a heavy
>> VMS user.
>
>> Every shop around the world has VMS systems and there
>> is a large VMS center to run all backend processing.
>>
>
>
>And they are currently hiring for VMS work.
>
>http://se.linkedin.com/jobs/jobs-System-Specialist-OpenVMS-2557424
>
>Nice description of what they actualy use their VMS system for to.
>A bit uncommon in job ads...
>
>Jan-Erik.

Perhaps IKEA could be persuaded to approach HP to buy their OpenVMS
business from them - they'd certainly be big enough to have pockets of
sufficient depth.

There's be a certain beauty to it, from my ancient days in the Machine
Rooms, the one size fits all Allen Key, was a constant companion with
the DEC Hardware.

IKEA/VMS - Prefabricated Excellence from Standard Components.

Dreaming, only dreaming... ;-)

Subcommandante XDelta schrieb:

> Perhaps IKEA could be persuaded to approach HP to buy their OpenVMS
> business from them - they'd certainly be big enough to have pockets of
> sufficient depth.
> 
> There's be a certain beauty to it, from my ancient days in the Machine
> Rooms, the one size fits all Allen Key, was a constant companion with
> the DEC Hardware.
> 
> IKEA/VMS - Prefabricated Excellence from Standard Components.

I doubt this would be a good match.
IKEA's "reputation" is more that of cheap non-functional junk
rather than quality.
If they should buy on OS, Linux with its DIY mentality
would be a much better fit.

In article <aavak7d01f74kqedddjof3h0ashsstoknq@4ax.com>, Subcommandante
XDelta <vlf@star.enet.dec.com> writes: 

> Perhaps IKEA could be persuaded to approach HP to buy their OpenVMS
> business from them - they'd certainly be big enough to have pockets of
> sufficient depth.

Compaq paid $ 9 billion for DEC.  Assuming VMS were for sale, 2--3 
billion would probably be the price tag.  Since IKEA is a private 
company (i.e. not listed on the stock market), we don't know what their 
finances are like.  Still, I think that a few billion would be too much.

> Dreaming, only dreaming... ;-)

OK.

Phillip Helbig---undress to reply schrieb:

> Compaq paid $ 9 billion for DEC. 

But that was roughly equivalent to DEC's annual revenue in 1997.
Today, BCS has about $400M per quarter, as we have just learned.
With VMS-related sales contributing to less than estimated 5..10%,
it'll be worth no more than $100M. If one counts only software,
even less.

> Assuming VMS were for sale, 2--3 
> billion would probably be the price tag.  Since IKEA is a private 
> company (i.e. not listed on the stock market), we don't know what their 
> finances are like.  Still, I think that a few billion would be too much.

Phillip Helbig---undress to reply wrote 2012-02-23 10:19:
> In article<aavak7d01f74kqedddjof3h0ashsstoknq@4ax.com>, Subcommandante
> XDelta<vlf@star.enet.dec.com>  writes:
>
>> Perhaps IKEA could be persuaded to approach HP to buy their OpenVMS
>> business from them - they'd certainly be big enough to have pockets of
>> sufficient depth.
>
> Compaq paid $ 9 billion for DEC.  Assuming VMS were for sale, 2--3
> billion would probably be the price tag.  Since IKEA is a private
> company (i.e. not listed on the stock market), we don't know what their
> finances are like.

These are the 2011 numbers (B EUR):

Turnover : 25
Earnings : 3.6
Earnings : 2.9
Assets   : 42
Equity   : 25

And yes, it is not a public company, it is privately owned
by the Kamprad family. The Founder, Ingvar Kamprad has an
estimated private capital of 68 B USD (2010).



> Still, I think that a few billion would be too much.
>
>> Dreaming, only dreaming... ;-)
>
> OK.
>

George Cook schrieb:

> I'd say, at least in the US, that IKEA is known as cheap reasonably
> functional items (i.e., stuff that does what one needs at a decent
> price).  True that DEC and VMS are a bad match as far as being cheap.

A few years ago IKEA (Germany) had the ad:

"wohnst Du noch oder lebst Du schon?"

and some joker transformed that into

"schraubst Du noch oder wohnst Du schon?"

which essentially describes that people never finish
assembling IKEA stuff so they could actually use it.

Maybe somebody bi-lingual can translate that into proper English
without loosing the fun part.

On Thu, 23 Feb 2012 07:59:05 +0100, Michael Kraemer wrote:

> Subcommandante XDelta schrieb:
> 
>> Perhaps IKEA could be persuaded to approach HP to buy their OpenVMS
>> business from them - they'd certainly be big enough to have pockets of
>> sufficient depth.
>> 
>> There's be a certain beauty to it, from my ancient days in the Machine
>> Rooms, the one size fits all Allen Key, was a constant companion with
>> the DEC Hardware.
>> 
>> IKEA/VMS - Prefabricated Excellence from Standard Components.
> 
> I doubt this would be a good match.
> IKEA's "reputation" is more that of cheap non-functional junk rather
> than quality.
> If they should buy on OS, Linux with its DIY mentality would be a much
> better fit.

A dozen years or so ago IKEA was celebrating its 25th year of their first 
outlet in Switzerland.  A more up market furniture maker took out a full 
page ad to wish IKEA a happy birthday and it showed a birthday cake with 
screws instead of candles.

If you counted them, there were a couple of screws missing :-)

An effective message, though I imagine it was a bit too subtle for many 
readers.


-- 
Paul Sture

In article <ji4o3p$uas$1@solani.org>, Michael Kraemer <M.Kraemer@gsi.de> writes:
> Subcommandante XDelta schrieb:
> 
>> Perhaps IKEA could be persuaded to approach HP to buy their OpenVMS
>> business from them - they'd certainly be big enough to have pockets of
>> sufficient depth.
>> 
>> There's be a certain beauty to it, from my ancient days in the Machine
>> Rooms, the one size fits all Allen Key, was a constant companion with
>> the DEC Hardware.
>> 
>> IKEA/VMS - Prefabricated Excellence from Standard Components.
> 
> I doubt this would be a good match.
> IKEA's "reputation" is more that of cheap non-functional junk
> rather than quality.
> If they should buy on OS, Linux with its DIY mentality
> would be a much better fit.

I'd say, at least in the US, that IKEA is known as cheap reasonably
functional items (i.e., stuff that does what one needs at a decent
price).  True that DEC and VMS are a bad match as far as being cheap.

Sadly, we had to retire our one size fits all Allen wrench less
than a year ago.  We managed to use the same one for about twenty
years.  The star coupler deinstallation was the final use. 


George Cook
WVNET

In article <ji52tp$vad$1@solani.org>, Michael Kraemer <M.Kraemer@gsi.de> writes:
> 
> "wohnst Du noch oder lebst Du schon?"
> 

   IEKA addresses germans using the familiar "du"?  Is this common in
   German advertizing, or did they have one hell of a big "du"
   celebration?

On Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:27:58 -0600, Bob Koehler wrote:

> In article <ji52tp$vad$1@solani.org>, Michael Kraemer <M.Kraemer@gsi.de>
> writes:
>> 
>> "wohnst Du noch oder lebst Du schon?"
>> 
>> 
>    IEKA addresses germans using the familiar "du"?  Is this common in
>    German advertizing, or did they have one hell of a big "du"
>    celebration?

It depends on the advert.  I see lots of "Du" used in Swiss adverts.  
More formal business adverts still use "Sie" though.

And something I've picked up from Usenet and web forums is that "Du" gets 
capitalised.  I'm sure I was taught it as being lowercase back in school 
days.



-- 
Paul Sture

In article <vs7i19-b28.ln1@news.sture.ch>, Paul Sture <paul@sture.ch> writes:
> On Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:27:58 -0600, Bob Koehler wrote:
> 
>> In article <ji52tp$vad$1@solani.org>, Michael Kraemer <M.Kraemer@gsi.de>
>> writes:
>>> 
>>> "wohnst Du noch oder lebst Du schon?"
>>> 
>>> 
>>    IEKA addresses germans using the familiar "du"?  Is this common in
>>    German advertizing, or did they have one hell of a big "du"
>>    celebration?
> 
> It depends on the advert.  I see lots of "Du" used in Swiss adverts.  
> More formal business adverts still use "Sie" though.
> 
> And something I've picked up from Usenet and web forums is that "Du" gets 
> capitalised.  I'm sure I was taught it as being lowercase back in school 
> days.

   Maybe "Du" is halfway between "du" and "sie"?  No that I write it, I
   can't ever recall "Sie" not being capitalized.

   Time to pull out my German primer.

On Feb 23, 4:27=A0pm, koeh...@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob
Koehler) wrote:
> In article <ji52tp$va...@solani.org>, Michael Kraemer <M.Krae...@gsi.de> =
writes:
>
> > "wohnst Du noch oder lebst Du schon?"
>
> =A0 =A0IEKA addresses germans using the familiar "du"? =A0Is this common =
in
> =A0 =A0German advertizing, or did they have one hell of a big "du"
> =A0 =A0celebration?

The marketing principle is that it depends on your product, the target
demographic and how you want to make your product appeal to that
audience. The sale takes precedent over customary cultural formalism.

For those of you who can read German...

Du oder Sie? Oder keine Anrede? =96 Zielgruppenansprache auf Affiliate-
Projekten
http://tinyurl.com/2wvt4gj


Du oder Sie? Was funktioniert in der Gesch=E4ftswelt besser?
http://www.wordweb.ch/online-marketing/du-oder-sie-business/


Cheers!

Keith Cayemberg

On 2/23/2012 1:08 PM, Bob Koehler wrote:
> In article<vs7i19-b28.ln1@news.sture.ch>, Paul Sture<paul@sture.ch>  writes:
>> On Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:27:58 -0600, Bob Koehler wrote:
>>
>>> In article<ji52tp$vad$1@solani.org>, Michael Kraemer<M.Kraemer@gsi.de>
>>> writes:
>>>>
>>>> "wohnst Du noch oder lebst Du schon?"
>>>>
>>>>
>>>     IEKA addresses germans using the familiar "du"?  Is this common in
>>>     German advertizing, or did they have one hell of a big "du"
>>>     celebration?
>>
>> It depends on the advert.  I see lots of "Du" used in Swiss adverts.
>> More formal business adverts still use "Sie" though.
>>
>> And something I've picked up from Usenet and web forums is that "Du" gets
>> capitalised.  I'm sure I was taught it as being lowercase back in school
>> days.
>
>     Maybe "Du" is halfway between "du" and "sie"?  No that I write it, I
>     can't ever recall "Sie" not being capitalized.
>
>     Time to pull out my German primer.
>

Google translate might be easier!  It will certainly be faster.  I think 
I still have a German-English dictionary somewhere but Google
gets the job done without having to vacuum up several pounds of dust!

In article <mr-dnbgItctvP9vSnZ2dnUVZ_sadnZ2d@giganews.com>, "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88@comcast.net> writes:
> 
> Google translate might be easier!  It will certainly be faster.  I think 
> I still have a German-English dictionary somewhere but Google
> gets the job done without having to vacuum up several pounds of dust!

   I sure as hell hope google translate doesn't care whether I write
   "du" or "Du"!

   Meanwhile, I'll stick with babelfish for that kind of stuff.

On Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:35:00 -0500, Richard B. Gilbert wrote:

> Google translate might be easier!  It will certainly be faster.  I think
> I still have a German-English dictionary somewhere but Google gets the
> job done without having to vacuum up several pounds of dust!

Richard, I can assure you that while online translation tools have got 
better over the years, they still cannot do the job a person reasonably 
fluent in both languages (and culture) can do.

French: Il ma fait un lapin
Literal English: He made me a rabbit
Real English: He stood me up

-- 
Paul Sture

On 2/23/2012 4:58 PM, Paul Sture wrote:
> On Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:35:00 -0500, Richard B. Gilbert wrote:
>
>> Google translate might be easier!  It will certainly be faster.  I think
>> I still have a German-English dictionary somewhere but Google gets the
>> job done without having to vacuum up several pounds of dust!
>
> Richard, I can assure you that while online translation tools have got
> better over the years, they still cannot do the job a person reasonably
> fluent in both languages (and culture) can do.
>
> French: Il ma fait un lapin
> Literal English: He made me a rabbit
> Real English: He stood me up
>

But if you are a monolingual American ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

I studied Spanish and German for two years each.  I didn't achieve 
fluency in either tongue!  I didn't need or want Spanish but German was
not offered in ninth grade; the only choices were Spanish and French.

New school after ONE year.  No, you can't take German.  You will be 
wasting that year of Spanish.  Just shut up and do as you're told.  <sigh>

I never approached fluency in either Spanish or German!

Joined the Army.  Hoped to be stationed in Europe.  No such luck.
I spent three years in southern Japan.  My  OTHER overseas assignment
was Sinop, Turkey.  If you've never heard of it, you haven't missed much!

After all this, I can order a  beer in four languages other than 
English: pidgin Japanese, pidgin Turkish, pidgin Spanish, and pidgin German.

I understand that some schools are now starting to teach languages
in first grade.  A little late but better than nothing!

On 23.02.2012 16:27, Bob Koehler wrote:

>     IEKA addresses germans using the familiar "du"?  Is this common in
>     German advertizing, or did they have one hell of a big "du"
>     celebration?

This is not common in German advertizing, but it's common for IKEA
in Germany. Their entire web site uses "du". Isn't it true that it is
common in Sweden and Denmark, maybe more northern European countries?
I believe that I heard that it's their "philosophy" to use "du" in
Germany.

Today it's more common to use "du" (lower case "d") than "Du" in
normal text (like advertizing). Only personal letters and maybe some
more exceptions use the upper case form. Personally, I often still use
"Du" where "du" might be correct today. The German spelling reform
some years ago made it possible...

Albrecht Schlosser wrote 2012-02-24 17:01:
> On 23.02.2012 16:27, Bob Koehler wrote:
>
>> IEKA addresses germans using the familiar "du"? Is this common in
>> German advertizing, or did they have one hell of a big "du"
>> celebration?
>
> This is not common in German advertizing, but it's common for IKEA
> in Germany. Their entire web site uses "du". Isn't it true that it is
> common in Sweden and Denmark,...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You-reform

The "You-Reform" (Swedish: Du-reformen) contributed to a change of
language usage in Sweden in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It
popularized the personal pronoun, second-person singular, you, at
the expense of the more general form, which meant addressing a
person directly in third person (he/she), second person plural
(you) and by titles (Mr., Mrs., etc.)....




> maybe more northern European countries?
> I believe that I heard that it's their "philosophy" to use "du" in
> Germany.
>
> Today it's more common to use "du" (lower case "d") than "Du" in
> normal text (like advertizing). Only personal letters and maybe some
> more exceptions use the upper case form. Personally, I often still use
> "Du" where "du" might be correct today. The German spelling reform
> some years ago made it possible...

In article <4hu72GrCfO6w@eisner.encompasserve.org>,
koehler@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) writes: 

> In article <ji52tp$vad$1@solani.org>, Michael Kraemer <M.Kraemer@gsi.de> writes:
> > 
> > "wohnst Du noch oder lebst Du schon?"
> > 
> 
>    IEKA addresses germans using the familiar "du"?  Is this common in
>    German advertizing, or did they have one hell of a big "du"
>    celebration?

It's not common in German advertizing, nor in Germany.  It is supposed
to reflect the fact that in Sweden everyone uses "du", which goes back
to an initiative of various organizations in the late 1960s/early 1970s,
the idea being that a society with little difference between rich and
poor (still true to a large extent today) should treat everyone equally.
I once asked my Swedish teacher if, for her, this included the king and
she said yes.  (In Norway, things are similar, but one would use the
polite form with the king.)  In the early 1970s, the heyday of political
buttons (the kind one wears), one said "s�ga du till kungen".  Many
people in Germany are probably aware of this and put it in the proper
context in the case of IKEA. 

I think this is OK in the case of IKEA.  What I don't like is its use by 
Apple, including being addressed as such in the Apple Store.  (In an 
IKEA store in Germany, the staff normally use the polite Sie when 
addressing customers.)  Many people think that this corresponds to the 
English "you", but that's not the case, for two reasons.  First, there 
is only one form in modern English, so this distinction doesn't exist.  
Since there is a distinction in German, "du" sounds different than "you" 
emotionally.  Second, historically "you" is the plural (and also polite, 
like vous in French) form while the singular form "thou" is archaic.

In modern German, "Sie" is the polite form for "you" ("sie" means
"they", "ihr" is plural and "du" is singular).  In earlier times, "Ihr"
was used as the polite form, corresponding to the use of "vous" in
French (except for the capitalization).  Dutch actually has three
distinct forms: "je" is "du", "jullie" is "ihr" and "U" is "Sie" ("they"
is "zij", which like "sie" in German is also the feminine singular). 

Phillip Helbig---undress to reply schrieb:
> In article <4hu72GrCfO6w@eisner.encompasserve.org>,
> koehler@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) writes: 
> 
> 
>>In article <ji52tp$vad$1@solani.org>, Michael Kraemer <M.Kraemer@gsi.de> writes:
>>
>>>"wohnst Du noch oder lebst Du schon?"
>>>
>>
>>   IEKA addresses germans using the familiar "du"?  Is this common in
>>   German advertizing, or did they have one hell of a big "du"
>>   celebration?
> 
> 
> It's not common in German advertizing, nor in Germany. 

Well, istr a Fisherman's Friend ad:
"Sind sie zu stark, bist Du zu schwach"
or sth like that.
(It's spoken, not written, so capitalization is no issue here)
There may be more of such ads, I don't know, I prefer ad-less stations
or I zap away when advertisement starts.
But I guess it's not that uncommmon to use "Du",
whenever an ad pretends to be your buddy coming along
and giving you good recommendations.
The IKEA ad is just of this kind.
It also plays with the reputation of the Swedes being
very informal.

Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote 2012-02-23 10:56:

About one of the largest VMS users in Sweden...

> And yes, it is not a public company, it is privately owned
> by the Kamprad family. The Founder, Ingvar Kamprad has an
> estimated private capital of 68 B USD (2010).
>

Now on place 4 on the "Bloomberg Billionaires Index" :

http://topics.bloomberg.com/bloomberg-billionaires-index/

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-05/kamprad-is-europe-s-richest-in-billionaire-index.html

Jan-Erik.

Richard B. Gilbert wrote:
> On 2/2/2012 6:07 PM, Single Stage to Orbit wrote:
>> On Thu, 2012-02-02 at 15:58 -0500, JF Mezei wrote:
>>>
>>> But my guess is that HP would more likely turn to folks like Hoff to
>>> help port VMS to the 8086.
>>>
>>> <cue in instant denial of any official plans to port VMS to 8086>
>>
>> Bugger 8086, why not port to ARM instead? :)
> 
> How about, "Because H-P is not interested in doing anything more with 
> VMS than it is contractually obligated to do!"
> 
> The hand writing on the wall has been painfully clear for the last 
> fifteen or twenty years.  VMS is an unwanted step child and H-P will
> do only enough to meet their contractual obligations.
> 
> If somebody wanted VMS badly enough to purchase the rights to VMS and to 
> assume responsibility for maintenance and H-P's contractual obligations, 
> H-P would be glad to be rid of it!
> 
> They might even pay you to take if off their hands!
> 
> 
> 

I doubt that.

As long as the cow is giving milk, is is not sent to become ground beef.

If the milk can be had without taking good care of the cow, ....

Simon Clubley wrote:

> PS: In case my point is too subtle: I don't subscribe to JF style
> theories, but instead believe in taking a evidence based approach when
> possible and there's now plenty of evidence with which the quality of
> the VMS India team can be compared to the old Nashua VMS team.

Not really fair, as the software development group that DEC at one time had can arguably 
be claimed to have been the best ever, and that no other group has ever come close since then.

But, what do I know ....

On 2012-03-05, David Froble <davef@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
> Simon Clubley wrote:
>
>> PS: In case my point is too subtle: I don't subscribe to JF style
>> theories, but instead believe in taking a evidence based approach when
>> possible and there's now plenty of evidence with which the quality of
>> the VMS India team can be compared to the old Nashua VMS team.
>
> Not really fair, as the software development group that DEC at one time
> had can arguably be claimed to have been the best ever, and that no other
> group has ever come close since then.
>
> But, what do I know ....

Why is that not a fair comparison ?

People invested in the DEC world (from the massive sites to the small
sites I am used to) simply because it was the best quality option
available at the time.

If HP want to replace all the talented people with their own teams, the
replacements _are_ going to be judged to those same standards, instead of
the standards present in lower quality parts of the computing world.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world

Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2012-03-05, David Froble <davef@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>> Simon Clubley wrote:
>>
>>> PS: In case my point is too subtle: I don't subscribe to JF style
>>> theories, but instead believe in taking a evidence based approach when
>>> possible and there's now plenty of evidence with which the quality of
>>> the VMS India team can be compared to the old Nashua VMS team.
>> Not really fair, as the software development group that DEC at one time
>> had can arguably be claimed to have been the best ever, and that no other
>> group has ever come close since then.
>>
>> But, what do I know ....
> 
> Why is that not a fair comparison ?
> 
> People invested in the DEC world (from the massive sites to the small
> sites I am used to) simply because it was the best quality option
> available at the time.
> 
> If HP want to replace all the talented people with their own teams, the
> replacements _are_ going to be judged to those same standards, instead of
> the standards present in lower quality parts of the computing world.
> 
> Simon.
> 

Back in the 1970s, 1980s, and a bit into the 1990s computer hardware was not cheap.  Did 
the actual hardware really cost so much.  My take on this is that a lot of that money went 
toward significant software and support expenditures.  With significant funding, it's 
possible to have software R&D, and a good support organization.  That's what DEC had, and 
probably IBM also.  Both companies developed multiple operating systems, compilers, and 
other software.

Why did Unix become so popular?  Because the "me too" computer manufacturers didn't have 
to develop it.  If they had to develop their own software portfolio, they'd never have 
been able to afford it.

Why did Microsoft take over the software world?  Because all the PCs and such needed 
software.  The companies building the computers could never have afforded to develop their 
own software.

DEC software development listened to their customers, and delivered what was asked for, 
but standards were maintained at a high level.  Similar to their hardware.  That's why I'm 
running VMS V7.2 on a VAXstation 4000 model 90A.  Anybody still running DOS on early 1990s 
hardware?

The big mistake was DEC thinking that they could carve out a large customer base, keep it, 
and milk it for large sums of money.  Remember the BI bus?  What DEC should have done was 
license their software to anyone who wanted to use it.  If they would have done that, it 
would be in the best interest of DEC's competitors to insure DEC remained viable.  But I 
digress ....

I just don't think that any computer company will ever again be able to afford the sizable 
investment for software and support that DEC (and probably IBM) spent in the past.  And 
even if they could, they won't in this day of "only the next quarter matters" management.

Which is why I wrote that it's not a fair comparison.  There most likely will never again 
in private enterprise be the funding to hire, train, and keep such a large and excellent 
group of software and support people.

David Froble <davef@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:

(snip)
> Back in the 1970s, 1980s, and a bit into the 1990s computer 
> hardware was not cheap.  Did the actual hardware really cost 
> so much.  

That is about when the transition occurred. Consider that core memory
required three wires to be threaded through a small ferrite ring for
each bit of main memory, often by hand. In the 1950's, hardware
really was expensive, and the (much simpler than today) software
was thrown in for free as incentive to buy. 

In the 1960's, hardware (per unit computation) was getting
cheaper fairly fast (though still expensive), while software
was getting more complicated and more expensive. 

There is a story about an IBM system, I believe system/3,
that came with either 32K or 64K of memory, with the lease
price depending on the memory size. It was cheaper to build
only one model, with a switch. When you order 64K they send
someone out to turn the switch to 64K. (All machines were
leased and under maintainence contract.)

> My take on this is that a lot of that money went toward 
> significant software and support expenditures.  

The 1970's to 1990's were about the time of transition. 
It may have taken the companies some time to adjust to it.

Until people started building clone processors, there was no
worry about people stealing software. 

> With significant funding, it's possible to have software 
> R&D, and a good support organization.  That's what DEC had, and 
> probably IBM also.  Both companies developed multiple operating 
> systems, compilers, and other software.

OS/360 is well known, read "The Mythical Man Month," for being
in the transition. It took longer to write and debug than was
expected, as the previous rules didn't apply anymore. 

Among other reasons, the delay in OS/360 allowed DOS/360 to 
become more popular than IBM had expected. (They had planned
for everyone to use OS/360, at least eventually.)

> Why did Unix become so popular?  
> Because the "me too" computer manufacturers didn't have 
> to develop it.  If they had to develop their own software 
> portfolio, they'd never have been able to afford it.

Well, first hardware had to be priced separately from software.
As well as I remember, for some time VAX was a popular host
for Unix. If VAX price included VMS, that would have discouraged
its use for Unix.

> Why did Microsoft take over the software world?  Because all the 
> PCs and such needed software.  The companies building the 
> computers could never have afforded to develop their own software.

Well, the microcomputers would have been about the beginning of
building processors without also supplying software for them.
The DEC processors of the time at least had DEC software as an option.

Intel supplied some software for the 8080, but not so much.

> DEC software development listened to their customers, and 
> delivered what was asked for, but standards were maintained 
> at a high level.  Similar to their hardware.  That's why I'm 
> running VMS V7.2 on a VAXstation 4000 model 90A.  Anybody 
> still running DOS on early 1990s hardware?

As hardware prices came down, there was more possibility for
competition. Also, the transition from writing system software
in assembler to HLLs allowed for cheaper and faster development
by competitors.

> The big mistake was DEC thinking that they could carve out a 
> large customer base, keep it, and milk it for large sums of money.  

Yes. But as long as big companies, government agencies, and 
universities (funded by government grants) would pay it, they
could keep doing it. 

> Remember the BI bus?  What DEC should have done was license their 
> software to anyone who wanted to use it.  If they would have done 
> that, it would be in the best interest of DEC's competitors to 
> insure DEC remained viable.  But I digress ....

> I just don't think that any computer company will ever again be 
> able to afford the sizable investment for software and support 
> that DEC (and probably IBM) spent in the past.  And even if they 
> could, they won't in this day of "only the next quarter matters" 
> management.

Well, S/360 (the hardware) was pretty much the beginning of the
idea of an "Architecture", allowing one to upgrade the hardware
while keeping the software pretty much constant. Prior to that,
each level of hardware used an incompatible instruction set,
and so all different software. Even so, I don't believe that IBM
expected that 50 years later they would still be selling processors
that would run that software. (z/ machines will still run the OS/360
compilers and their compiled code.) Processors have gotten faster,
memories bigger, but the S/360 instructions are still there.

> Which is why I wrote that it's not a fair comparison.  
> There most likely will never again in private enterprise be 
> the funding to hire, train, and keep such a large and excellent 
> group of software and support people.

Well, the 1950's were the beginnging of high-level languages,
allowing for software to be machine independent. In the 1960's,
system software, much of OS/360, was still written in assembler.

The transition to writing system software in HLLs allowed it
to be ported, relatively easily, between processors. It also allows
programmers to be much more productive. In addition, it allows
such development teams to be independent of hardware producers.

There is much incentive to use existing system software and not
try to reinvent the wheel. Note, for example, Linux/390 that IBM
is investing in. 

-- glen

On 2012-03-06, David Froble <davef@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
> Simon Clubley wrote:
>> On 2012-03-05, David Froble <davef@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>>> Simon Clubley wrote:
>>>
>>>> PS: In case my point is too subtle: I don't subscribe to JF style
>>>> theories, but instead believe in taking a evidence based approach when
>>>> possible and there's now plenty of evidence with which the quality of
>>>> the VMS India team can be compared to the old Nashua VMS team.
>>> Not really fair, as the software development group that DEC at one time
>>> had can arguably be claimed to have been the best ever, and that no other
>>> group has ever come close since then.
>>>
>>> But, what do I know ....
>> 
>> Why is that not a fair comparison ?
>> 
>> People invested in the DEC world (from the massive sites to the small
>> sites I am used to) simply because it was the best quality option
>> available at the time.
>> 
>> If HP want to replace all the talented people with their own teams, the
>> replacements _are_ going to be judged to those same standards, instead of
>> the standards present in lower quality parts of the computing world.
>> 
>
> I just don't think that any computer company will ever again be able to afford the sizable 
> investment for software and support that DEC (and probably IBM) spent in the past.  And 
> even if they could, they won't in this day of "only the next quarter matters" management.
>
> Which is why I wrote that it's not a fair comparison.  There most likely will never again 
> in private enterprise be the funding to hire, train, and keep such a large and excellent 
> group of software and support people.

Well, if HP want to give us commodity level quality, it would be nice if
they charged us commodity level prices. :-)

Seriously however, I understand what you are saying, but the basic problem
here is that the new team have now had 2 to 3 years at this and the same
basic type issues still keep cropping up time and again. I would have
expected the new team to be up to speed by now.

I wonder if HP are having a problem retaining staff and keep having to
train newcomers to work on a operating system they have probably never
used before ? That would certainly be one explanation for the ongoing
quality issues.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world

On Mar 6, 2:35=A0pm, David Froble <da...@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
> Simon Clubley wrote:
> > On 2012-03-05, David Froble <da...@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
> >> Simon Clubley wrote:
>
> >>> PS: In case my point is too subtle: I don't subscribe to JF style
> >>> theories, but instead believe in taking a evidence based approach whe=
n
> >>> possible and there's now plenty of evidence with which the quality of
> >>> the VMS India team can be compared to the old Nashua VMS team.
> >> Not really fair, as the software development group that DEC at one tim=
e
> >> had can arguably be claimed to have been the best ever, and that no ot=
her
> >> group has ever come close since then.
>
> >> But, what do I know ....
>
> > Why is that not a fair comparison ?
>
> > People invested in the DEC world (from the massive sites to the small
> > sites I am used to) simply because it was the best quality option
> > available at the time.
>
> > If HP want to replace all the talented people with their own teams, the
> > replacements _are_ going to be judged to those same standards, instead =
of
> > the standards present in lower quality parts of the computing world.
>
> > Simon.
>
> Back in the 1970s, 1980s, and a bit into the 1990s computer hardware was =
not cheap. =A0Did
> the actual hardware really cost so much. =A0My take on this is that a lot=
 of that money went
> toward significant software and support expenditures. =A0With significant=
 funding, it's
> possible to have software R&D, and a good support organization. =A0That's=
 what DEC had, and
> probably IBM also. =A0Both companies developed multiple operating systems=
, compilers, and
> other software.
>
> Why did Unix become so popular? =A0Because the "me too" computer manufact=
urers didn't have
> to develop it. =A0If they had to develop their own software portfolio, th=
ey'd never have
> been able to afford it.
>
> Why did Microsoft take over the software world? =A0Because all the PCs an=
d such needed
> software. =A0The companies building the computers could never have afford=
ed to develop their
> own software.
>
> DEC software development listened to their customers, and delivered what =
was asked for,
> but standards were maintained at a high level. =A0Similar to their hardwa=
re. =A0That's why I'm
> running VMS V7.2 on a VAXstation 4000 model 90A. =A0Anybody still running=
 DOS on early 1990s
> hardware?
>
> The big mistake was DEC thinking that they could carve out a large custom=
er base, keep it,
> and milk it for large sums of money. =A0Remember the BI bus? =A0What DEC =
should have done was
> license their software to anyone who wanted to use it. =A0If they would h=
ave done that, it
> would be in the best interest of DEC's competitors to insure DEC remained=
 viable. =A0But I
> digress ....
>
> I just don't think that any computer company will ever again be able to a=
fford the sizable
> investment for software and support that DEC (and probably IBM) spent in =
the past. =A0And
> even if they could, they won't in this day of "only the next quarter matt=
ers" management.
>
> Which is why I wrote that it's not a fair comparison. =A0There most likel=
y will never again
> in private enterprise be the funding to hire, train, and keep such a larg=
e and excellent
> group of software and support people.

BI didn't work out well, but there weren't comparable "industry
standard" buses around. Not too long after that, DEC put a lot of time
and money into the industry standard Futurebus+ (DEC 4000, DEC 7000,
and DEC 10000 Alpha systems could all do FB+) but you won't have heard
of it. Then there was TURBOchannel, a DEC design for a simple fast IO
bus (found in the DEC 3000 series) with basically no licencing
restrictions. And then shortly after that came PCI, with DEC quite
happily jumping on the bandwagon.

"There most likely will never again in private enterprise be the
funding to hire, train, and keep such a large and excellent group of
software and support people."

Have you ever done business with National Instruments? No I haven't
either, but everything I hear about them says they sell a range of
quality product at a premium price with a service to match, much like
DEC in the good old days, and that their employees are happy to work
there. How do they do it? Well I suspect at least part of the magic is
that their customers are scientists and engineers not trend-following
and/or bean-counting IT people. Decent technologists still have an
understanding of the difference between price and value. IT
departments mostly lost that understanding over a decade ago.

In article <jj5ro9$9mv$1@speranza.aioe.org>, glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> writes:
> 
> There is a story about an IBM system, I believe system/3,
> that came with either 32K or 64K of memory, with the lease
> price depending on the memory size. It was cheaper to build
> only one model, with a switch. When you order 64K they send
> someone out to turn the switch to 64K. (All machines were
> leased and under maintainence contract.)

   Beats putting epoxy in the backplane, then selling backplanes
   cheaper than the option.

John Wallace schrieb:

> Have you ever done business with National Instruments? No I haven't
> either, but everything I hear about them says they sell a range of
> quality product at a premium price with a service to match, much like
> DEC in the good old days, and that their employees are happy to work
> there. How do they do it? Well I suspect at least part of the magic is
> that their customers are scientists and engineers not trend-following
> and/or bean-counting IT people. 

NI stuff is (almost) all Weendoze,
and most scientists and engineers have the same sheep mentality
as everybody else.

> Decent technologists still have an
> understanding of the difference between price and value. IT
> departments mostly lost that understanding over a decade ago.

On 3/6/2012 10:00 PM, Michael Kraemer wrote:
> John Wallace schrieb:
>
>> Have you ever done business with National Instruments? No I haven't
>> either, but everything I hear about them says they sell a range of
>> quality product at a premium price with a service to match, much like
>> DEC in the good old days, and that their employees are happy to work
>> there. How do they do it? Well I suspect at least part of the magic is
>> that their customers are scientists and engineers not trend-following
>> and/or bean-counting IT people.
>
> NI stuff is (almost) all Weendoze,
> and most scientists and engineers have the same sheep mentality
> as everybody else.
>

Windows works!  It started as something close to rotting manure.
That was years ago.  Today, it works.  It has worked for the last eight 
or nine years.  I don't know of any serious competition!

You may sneer and mutter about "click and drool".  I'm happy to finally 
have a desktop system with software that works and that I can afford.  I 
have a word processor and a spread sheet.  I could have a database if I 
needed one.  I even have "Turbo Tax" which has made preparing my income 
tax return bearable.

Well, as close to bearable as it can be!

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 20:23:37 +0000, glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:

> There is a story about an IBM system, I believe system/3, that came with
> either 32K or 64K of memory, with the lease price depending on the
> memory size. It was cheaper to build only one model, with a switch. When
> you order 64K they send someone out to turn the switch to 64K. (All
> machines were leased and under maintainence contract.)

That happened with disks and line printers too.  The extra capacity or 
speed was enabled by snipping a link on a circuit board.

-- 
Paul Sture

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 15:58:46 -0600, Bob Koehler wrote:

> In article <jj5ro9$9mv$1@speranza.aioe.org>, glen herrmannsfeldt
> <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> writes:
>> 
>> There is a story about an IBM system, I believe system/3, that came
>> with either 32K or 64K of memory, with the lease price depending on the
>> memory size. It was cheaper to build only one model, with a switch.
>> When you order 64K they send someone out to turn the switch to 64K.
>> (All machines were leased and under maintainence contract.)
> 
>    Beats putting epoxy in the backplane, then selling backplanes cheaper
>    than the option.

An alternative to that was a certain OEM which cut corners on 
construction and boards were left "flapping in the wind" rather than held 
securely in place.



-- 
Paul Sture

In article <zcadnY76nsMkQ8vSnZ2dnUVZ_vOdnZ2d@giganews.com>, "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88@comcast.net> writes:
>On 3/6/2012 10:00 PM, Michael Kraemer wrote:
>> John Wallace schrieb:
>>
>>> Have you ever done business with National Instruments? No I haven't
>>> either, but everything I hear about them says they sell a range of
>>> quality product at a premium price with a service to match, much like
>>> DEC in the good old days, and that their employees are happy to work
>>> there. How do they do it? Well I suspect at least part of the magic is
>>> that their customers are scientists and engineers not trend-following
>>> and/or bean-counting IT people.
>>
>> NI stuff is (almost) all Weendoze,
>> and most scientists and engineers have the same sheep mentality
>> as everybody else.
>>
>
>Windows works!  It started as something close to rotting manure.

And now it IS rotting manure!



>That was years ago.  Today, it works.  It has worked for the last eight 
>or nine years.  I don't know of any serious competition!

You need to get out more Richard! :)

Mac OS X, Linux and Android?  I recently obtained a 17.3" HP Envy.  It's
a very nice laptop with all the earmarkings of an Apple ripoff -- replete
with a glowing HP logo vis a vis the glowing Apple on the MacBooks.  But,
it still has braindamaged BIOS, came with M$ Virus Collector 7, and it's
stained with M$ logos.  I did manage to get Ubuntu working on it after a
number of days.  Why?  This thing was, for all intents and purposes, made
to be as WEENDOZE biased and anything else hostile as possible.  Hardware
is quite nice; albeit, the trackpad is way sensitive, and too much effort
is needed to click on it to drag and scroll.  I was finally able to get 
its bluetooth adapter working with Ubuntu and now use an old Macally BT
mouse instead.  This Envy touts great audio but let's get real!  It's a
laptop and trying to get real room-filling quality audio is not possible
in the small speaker footprint.  Many here seem to dump on Apple and its
products for being too expensive but it seems HP is trying to imitate the
competition (Apple) more than innovate.  Innovation is Apple's territory
forte! ;)  And M$ is tanning in the Apple's shadow too.  Remember VISTA?
Visual Interface Similar To Apple's?

There a M$ store to soon open in the Freehold Raceway.  I can't wait to
see how much they copy from the Apple Store.  Still, what can it offer?
I'd be worried that I'd be infected with a virus by just walking inside.



>You may sneer and mutter about "click and drool".  I'm happy to finally 
>have a desktop system with software that works and that I can afford.  I 
>have a word processor and a spread sheet.  I could have a database if I 
>needed one.  I even have "Turbo Tax" which has made preparing my income 
>tax return bearable.
>
>Well, as close to bearable as it can be!

A flat tax would make it bearable?  Abolish the unfair tax codes and the
infernal revenue service!
-- 
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker    VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG

Well I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.

On 3/7/2012 7:15 AM, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
> In article<zcadnY76nsMkQ8vSnZ2dnUVZ_vOdnZ2d@giganews.com>, "Richard B. Gilbert"<rgilbert88@comcast.net>  writes:
>> On 3/6/2012 10:00 PM, Michael Kraemer wrote:
>>> John Wallace schrieb:
>>>
>>>> Have you ever done business with National Instruments? No I haven't
>>>> either, but everything I hear about them says they sell a range of
>>>> quality product at a premium price with a service to match, much like
>>>> DEC in the good old days, and that their employees are happy to work
>>>> there. How do they do it? Well I suspect at least part of the magic is
>>>> that their customers are scientists and engineers not trend-following
>>>> and/or bean-counting IT people.
>>>
>>> NI stuff is (almost) all Weendoze,
>>> and most scientists and engineers have the same sheep mentality
>>> as everybody else.
>>>
>>
>> Windows works!  It started as something close to rotting manure.
>
> And now it IS rotting manure!
>
>
>
>> That was years ago.  Today, it works.  It has worked for the last eight
>> or nine years.  I don't know of any serious competition!
>
> You need to get out more Richard! :)
>
> Mac OS X, Linux and Android?  I recently obtained a 17.3" HP Envy.  It's
> a very nice laptop with all the earmarkings of an Apple ripoff -- replete
> with a glowing HP logo vis a vis the glowing Apple on the MacBooks.  But,
> it still has braindamaged BIOS, came with M$ Virus Collector 7, and it's
> stained with M$ logos.  I did manage to get Ubuntu working on it after a
> number of days.  Why?  This thing was, for all intents and purposes, made
> to be as WEENDOZE biased and anything else hostile as possible.  Hardware
> is quite nice; albeit, the trackpad is way sensitive, and too much effort
> is needed to click on it to drag and scroll.  I was finally able to get
> its bluetooth adapter working with Ubuntu and now use an old Macally BT
> mouse instead.  This Envy touts great audio but let's get real!  It's a
> laptop and trying to get real room-filling quality audio is not possible
> in the small speaker footprint.  Many here seem to dump on Apple and its
> products for being too expensive but it seems HP is trying to imitate the
> competition (Apple) more than innovate.  Innovation is Apple's territory
> forte! ;)  And M$ is tanning in the Apple's shadow too.  Remember VISTA?
> Visual Interface Similar To Apple's?
>
> There a M$ store to soon open in the Freehold Raceway.  I can't wait to
> see how much they copy from the Apple Store.  Still, what can it offer?
> I'd be worried that I'd be infected with a virus by just walking inside.
>
>
>
>> You may sneer and mutter about "click and drool".  I'm happy to finally
>> have a desktop system with software that works and that I can afford.  I
>> have a word processor and a spread sheet.  I could have a database if I
>> needed one.  I even have "Turbo Tax" which has made preparing my income
>> tax return bearable.
>>
>> Well, as close to bearable as it can be!
>
> A flat tax would make it bearable?  Abolish the unfair tax codes and the
> infernal revenue service!

How would you make the tax codes "fair"?????????????????????????????????

As long as we have government, somebody has to pay for it!

Do you want to try doing without government?  Every man for himself and 
devil take the hindmost?

On 3/7/2012 7:15 AM, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
> In article<zcadnY76nsMkQ8vSnZ2dnUVZ_vOdnZ2d@giganews.com>, "Richard B. Gilbert"<rgilbert88@comcast.net>  writes:
>> On 3/6/2012 10:00 PM, Michael Kraemer wrote:
>>> John Wallace schrieb:
>>>
>>>> Have you ever done business with National Instruments? No I haven't
>>>> either, but everything I hear about them says they sell a range of
>>>> quality product at a premium price with a service to match, much like
>>>> DEC in the good old days, and that their employees are happy to work
>>>> there. How do they do it? Well I suspect at least part of the magic is
>>>> that their customers are scientists and engineers not trend-following
>>>> and/or bean-counting IT people.
>>>
>>> NI stuff is (almost) all Weendoze,
>>> and most scientists and engineers have the same sheep mentality
>>> as everybody else.
>>>
>>
>> Windows works!  It started as something close to rotting manure.
>
> And now it IS rotting manure!
>
>
>
>> That was years ago.  Today, it works.  It has worked for the last eight
>> or nine years.  I don't know of any serious competition!
>
> You need to get out more Richard! :)
>
> Mac OS X, Linux and Android?  I recently obtained a 17.3" HP Envy.  It's
> a very nice laptop with all the earmarkings of an Apple ripoff -- replete
> with a glowing HP logo vis a vis the glowing Apple on the MacBooks.  But,
> it still has braindamaged BIOS, came with M$ Virus Collector 7, and it's
> stained with M$ logos.  I did manage to get Ubuntu working on it after a
> number of days.  Why?  This thing was, for all intents and purposes, made
> to be as WEENDOZE biased and anything else hostile as possible.  Hardware
> is quite nice; albeit, the trackpad is way sensitive, and too much effort
> is needed to click on it to drag and scroll.  I was finally able to get
> its bluetooth adapter working with Ubuntu and now use an old Macally BT
> mouse instead.  This Envy touts great audio but let's get real!  It's a
> laptop and trying to get real room-filling quality audio is not possible
> in the small speaker footprint.  Many here seem to dump on Apple and its
> products for being too expensive but it seems HP is trying to imitate the
> competition (Apple) more than innovate.  Innovation is Apple's territory
> forte! ;)  And M$ is tanning in the Apple's shadow too.  Remember VISTA?
> Visual Interface Similar To Apple's?
>
> There a M$ store to soon open in the Freehold Raceway.  I can't wait to
> see how much they copy from the Apple Store.  Still, what can it offer?
> I'd be worried that I'd be infected with a virus by just walking inside.
>
>
>
>> You may sneer and mutter about "click and drool".  I'm happy to finally
>> have a desktop system with software that works and that I can afford.  I
>> have a word processor and a spread sheet.  I could have a database if I
>> needed one.  I even have "Turbo Tax" which has made preparing my income
>> tax return bearable.
>>
>> Well, as close to bearable as it can be!
>
> A flat tax would make it bearable?  Abolish the unfair tax codes and the
> infernal revenue service!

How would you make the tax codes "fair"?????????????????????????????????

As long as we have government, somebody has to pay for it!

Do you want to try doing without government?  Every man for himself and 
devil take the hindmost?

In article <4F5769D5.5050107@comcast.net>, "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88@comcast.net> writes:
>On 3/7/2012 7:15 AM, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
>> In article<zcadnY76nsMkQ8vSnZ2dnUVZ_vOdnZ2d@giganews.com>, "Richard B. Gilbert"<rgilbert88@comcast.net>  writes:
>>> On 3/6/2012 10:00 PM, Michael Kraemer wrote:
>>>> John Wallace schrieb:
>>>>
>>>>> Have you ever done business with National Instruments? No I haven't
>>>>> either, but everything I hear about them says they sell a range of
>>>>> quality product at a premium price with a service to match, much like
>>>>> DEC in the good old days, and that their employees are happy to work
>>>>> there. How do they do it? Well I suspect at least part of the magic is
>>>>> that their customers are scientists and engineers not trend-following
>>>>> and/or bean-counting IT people.
>>>>
>>>> NI stuff is (almost) all Weendoze,
>>>> and most scientists and engineers have the same sheep mentality
>>>> as everybody else.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Windows works!  It started as something close to rotting manure.
>>
>> And now it IS rotting manure!
>>
>>
>>
>>> That was years ago.  Today, it works.  It has worked for the last eight
>>> or nine years.  I don't know of any serious competition!
>>
>> You need to get out more Richard! :)
>>
>> Mac OS X, Linux and Android?  I recently obtained a 17.3" HP Envy.  It's
>> a very nice laptop with all the earmarkings of an Apple ripoff -- replete
>> with a glowing HP logo vis a vis the glowing Apple on the MacBooks.  But,
>> it still has braindamaged BIOS, came with M$ Virus Collector 7, and it's
>> stained with M$ logos.  I did manage to get Ubuntu working on it after a
>> number of days.  Why?  This thing was, for all intents and purposes, made
>> to be as WEENDOZE biased and anything else hostile as possible.  Hardware
>> is quite nice; albeit, the trackpad is way sensitive, and too much effort
>> is needed to click on it to drag and scroll.  I was finally able to get
>> its bluetooth adapter working with Ubuntu and now use an old Macally BT
>> mouse instead.  This Envy touts great audio but let's get real!  It's a
>> laptop and trying to get real room-filling quality audio is not possible
>> in the small speaker footprint.  Many here seem to dump on Apple and its
>> products for being too expensive but it seems HP is trying to imitate the
>> competition (Apple) more than innovate.  Innovation is Apple's territory
>> forte! ;)  And M$ is tanning in the Apple's shadow too.  Remember VISTA?
>> Visual Interface Similar To Apple's?
>>
>> There a M$ store to soon open in the Freehold Raceway.  I can't wait to
>> see how much they copy from the Apple Store.  Still, what can it offer?
>> I'd be worried that I'd be infected with a virus by just walking inside.
>>
>>
>>
>>> You may sneer and mutter about "click and drool".  I'm happy to finally
>>> have a desktop system with software that works and that I can afford.  I
>>> have a word processor and a spread sheet.  I could have a database if I
>>> needed one.  I even have "Turbo Tax" which has made preparing my income
>>> tax return bearable.
>>>
>>> Well, as close to bearable as it can be!
>>
>> A flat tax would make it bearable?  Abolish the unfair tax codes and the
>> infernal revenue service!
>
>How would you make the tax codes "fair"?????????????????????????????????
>
>As long as we have government, somebody has to pay for it!

You just answered your own question.



>Do you want to try doing without government?  Every man for himself and 
>devil take the hindmost?

No but with a gov't being the devil takes all isn't all that much better,
is it?

-- 
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker    VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG

Well I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.

On 3/7/2012 10:06 AM, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
> In article<4F5769D5.5050107@comcast.net>, "Richard B. Gilbert"<rgilbert88@comcast.net>  writes:
>> On 3/7/2012 7:15 AM, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
>>> In article<zcadnY76nsMkQ8vSnZ2dnUVZ_vOdnZ2d@giganews.com>, "Richard B. Gilbert"<rgilbert88@comcast.net>   writes:
>>>> On 3/6/2012 10:00 PM, Michael Kraemer wrote:
>>>>> John Wallace schrieb:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Have you ever done business with National Instruments? No I haven't
>>>>>> either, but everything I hear about them says they sell a range of
>>>>>> quality product at a premium price with a service to match, much like
>>>>>> DEC in the good old days, and that their employees are happy to work
>>>>>> there. How do they do it? Well I suspect at least part of the magic is
>>>>>> that their customers are scientists and engineers not trend-following
>>>>>> and/or bean-counting IT people.
>>>>>
>>>>> NI stuff is (almost) all Weendoze,
>>>>> and most scientists and engineers have the same sheep mentality
>>>>> as everybody else.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Windows works!  It started as something close to rotting manure.
>>>
>>> And now it IS rotting manure!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> That was years ago.  Today, it works.  It has worked for the last eight
>>>> or nine years.  I don't know of any serious competition!
>>>
>>> You need to get out more Richard! :)

Hey!  It works for me.  Has for years!  Windows XP Service Pack 3.

Am I supposed to replace it with the cryptic language used by Unix 
and/or Linux?

No thanks!

VMS is great but I can't afford it and the applications I need either 
don't run under VMS or I can't afford them.

Word or equivalent  (Word Perfect is or was available $$$$$$)
I have a licensed copy for Windows
Lotus 1-2-3 or equivalent
Family Tree Maker
CardFile
TurboTax (Federal & State Income Tax)
Quicken (My checking account)
Bridge Baron (Contract Bridge game)
Motorola Phone Tools  (Cell-Phone stuff)
Etc.

In article <mOOdnYVwoIuqM8rSnZ2dnUVZ_qOdnZ2d@giganews.com>, "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88@comcast.net> writes:
>{...snip...}
>Hey!  It works for me.  Has for years!  Windows XP Service Pack 3.
>
>Am I supposed to replace it with the cryptic language used by Unix 
>and/or Linux?

As opposed to no language in WEENDOZE.



>No thanks!
>
>VMS is great but I can't afford it and the applications I need either 
>don't run under VMS or I can't afford them.
>
>Word or equivalent  (Word Perfect is or was available $$$$$$)

OpenOffice/LibreOffice is available for Linux/Mac OS X and Apple Pages
for Mac OS X.

>I have a licensed copy for Windows
>Lotus 1-2-3 or equivalent

OpenOffice/LibreOffice is available for Linux & Mac OS X and Apple Numbers
for Mac OS X.

>Family Tree Maker

That's available on OS X.  There's probably free alternatives on Linux.


>CardFile
>TurboTax (Federal & State Income Tax)

Runs on OS X too.

>Quicken (My checking account)

Also runs on OS X.


>Bridge Baron (Contract Bridge game)

XContractBridge 16.00


>Motorola Phone Tools  (Cell-Phone stuff)

Dunno.  I wouldn't buy another Motorola phone since I was suckered into
purchasing the Razor.  What a PoS that was!


The excuses that one can't live without Billzebub just don't fly in the
face of reality. ;)
-- 
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker    VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG

Well I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.

On 3/7/2012 6:15 AM, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
>
> A flat tax would make it bearable?  Abolish the unfair tax codes and the
> infernal revenue service!

Need to give the congress some incentive:

Get a law passed that requires all members of congress and their spouses 
to do their personal taxes with out any professional help or tax 
software, and that all of the congressional tax returns will be audited 
and with mandatory fines for errors.  After the first year, double the 
fines for members of congress that can not figure out how to do their 
own taxes.

-John
Personal Opinion Only

In article <I4CdnUFe450Kf8rSnZ2dnUVZ_sydnZ2d@mchsi.com>, "John E. Malmberg" <wb8tyw@qsl.network> writes:
>On 3/7/2012 6:15 AM, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
>>
>> A flat tax would make it bearable?  Abolish the unfair tax codes and the
>> infernal revenue service!
>
>Need to give the congress some incentive:
>
>Get a law passed that requires all members of congress and their spouses 
>to do their personal taxes with out any professional help or tax 
>software, and that all of the congressional tax returns will be audited 
>and with mandatory fines for errors.  After the first year, double the 
>fines for members of congress that can not figure out how to do their 
>own taxes.

Sadly, being one of the only great flaws of the US Constitution, the people
who would create such a law are the ones you cite to be under its mandate.
That will never happen with that plague of d'rats known as Congress!!!  It
could be a Constitutional amendment but, considering the current disregard
for that document, I'd doubt much that it'd do any good at all.

-- 
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker    VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG

Well I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.

On 3/7/2012 3:26 PM, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
> In article<mOOdnYVwoIuqM8rSnZ2dnUVZ_qOdnZ2d@giganews.com>, "Richard B. Gilbert"<rgilbert88@comcast.net>  writes:
>> {...snip...}
>> Hey!  It works for me.  Has for years!  Windows XP Service Pack 3.
>>
>> Am I supposed to replace it with the cryptic language used by Unix
>> and/or Linux?
>
> As opposed to no language in WEENDOZE.
>
>
>
>> No thanks!
>>
>> VMS is great but I can't afford it and the applications I need either
>> don't run under VMS or I can't afford them.
>>
>> Word or equivalent  (Word Perfect is or was available $$$$$$)
>
> OpenOffice/LibreOffice is available for Linux/Mac OS X and Apple Pages
> for Mac OS X.
>
>> I have a licensed copy for Windows
>> Lotus 1-2-3 or equivalent
>
> OpenOffice/LibreOffice is available for Linux&  Mac OS X and Apple Numbers
> for Mac OS X.
>
>> Family Tree Maker
>
> That's available on OS X.  There's probably free alternatives on Linux.
>
>
>> CardFile
>> TurboTax (Federal&  State Income Tax)
>
> Runs on OS X too.
>
>> Quicken (My checking account)
>
> Also runs on OS X.
>
>
>> Bridge Baron (Contract Bridge game)
>
> XContractBridge 16.00
>
>
>> Motorola Phone Tools  (Cell-Phone stuff)
>
> Dunno.  I wouldn't buy another Motorola phone since I was suckered into
> purchasing the Razor.  What a PoS that was!

Why do you say that?  I bought the Motorola RAZR V3m and have found it
satisfactory!

I don't try to surf the web with it!  The lack of a QWERTY keyboard 
makes entering text extremely awkward.  Do you want a "C"?  Hit the 
"2-ABC" key and then scroll over to get the "C"!

If I want to enter your name and phone number, I'll record it on paper
until I can plug the phone into my computer. I can receive text though
I very seldom get any.

Before I retired, my systems would send text to my phone if they needed
"professional help".

<snip>

On 3/7/2012 3:26 PM, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
> In article<mOOdnYVwoIuqM8rSnZ2dnUVZ_qOdnZ2d@giganews.com>, "Richard B. Gilbert"<rgilbert88@comcast.net>  writes:
>> {...snip...}
>> Hey!  It works for me.  Has for years!  Windows XP Service Pack 3.
>>
>> Am I supposed to replace it with the cryptic language used by Unix
>> and/or Linux?
>
> As opposed to no language in WEENDOZE.
>
>
>
>> No thanks!
>>
>> VMS is great but I can't afford it and the applications I need either
>> don't run under VMS or I can't afford them.
>>
>> Word or equivalent  (Word Perfect is or was available $$$$$$)
>
> OpenOffice/LibreOffice is available for Linux/Mac OS X and Apple Pages
> for Mac OS X.
>
>> I have a licensed copy for Windows
>> Lotus 1-2-3 or equivalent
>
> OpenOffice/LibreOffice is available for Linux&  Mac OS X and Apple Numbers
> for Mac OS X.
>
>> Family Tree Maker
>
> That's available on OS X.  There's probably free alternatives on Linux.
>
>
>> CardFile
>> TurboTax (Federal&  State Income Tax)
>
> Runs on OS X too.
>
>> Quicken (My checking account)
>
> Also runs on OS X.
>
>
>> Bridge Baron (Contract Bridge game)
>
> XContractBridge 16.00
>
>
>> Motorola Phone Tools  (Cell-Phone stuff)
>
> Dunno.  I wouldn't buy another Motorola phone since I was suckered into
> purchasing the Razor.  What a PoS that was!
>
>
> The excuses that one can't live without Billzebub just don't fly in the
> face of reality. ;)

I don't WANT to try to live without Windows. The early versions were a
mess.  Windows 2000 was usable.  Windows XP is what I currently use.  It
has been many years since I've seen the "Blue/Black Screen of Death".

As I recall the story, "Billzebub" was demonstrating Windows to a bunch
of wheels when he got the Blue/Black Screen of Death.  He was not 
pleased and issued orders to "Fix it!  Now!!"

It took a while but I haven't had a "BSOD" for seven or eight years now.

It may not be perfect but it's good enough for me!

Richard B. Gilbert schrieb:

> 
> I don't WANT to try to live without Windows. 

Is this a VMS or a Weendoze fan group?
With such a mindset, it's no wonder VMS went down the toilet.

On Wed, 2012-03-07 at 21:06 -0500, Richard B. Gilbert wrote:

> I don't WANT to try to live without Windows.

Back in 1996, I switched to Linux. Haven't looked back since. It _is_
possible to live happily afterwards.=20
--=20
Tactical Nuclear Kittens

On 3/7/2012 9:36 PM, Michael Kraemer wrote:
> Richard B. Gilbert schrieb:
>
>>
>> I don't WANT to try to live without Windows.
>
> Is this a VMS or a Weendoze fan group?
> With such a mindset, it's no wonder VMS went down the toilet.
>

I have also VMS, VAX and Alpha, but X86 Windows is where the 
applications live that I need.  Word or Word Perfect, Lotus 1-2-3, 
Turbo-Tax, the VT100 emulation that lets me talk to my VMS Systems, etc.

VMS jobs dried up and blew away about twelve years ago.
DEC itself dried up and blew away.

I swallowed my pride and worked at supporting "X86" systems.

I'd be thrilled to find a job working with VAX and/or Alpha and VMS.
As far as I can see, there are none available nor have any been 
available since 2004.

In article <KO6dnaoPhs19k8XSnZ2dnUVZ_uudnZ2d@giganews.com>, "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88@comcast.net> writes:
>{...snip...}
>>
>> Dunno.  I wouldn't buy another Motorola phone since I was suckered into
>> purchasing the Razor.  What a PoS that was!
>
>Why do you say that?  I bought the Motorola RAZR V3m and have found it
>satisfactory!

The battery cover release switch was position such that ever time the
phone was opened, the screen option would pop the batter cover off.
The menu navigation buttons were too close and sensitive for use with
the thumb (one handed) and even with index finger (two-handed).  I'd
keep a pen close by in the early day and eventually, I just gave up
trying to use them and just manually dialed the few numbers I'd call.


-- 
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker    VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG

Well I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.

On 3/7/2012 10:11 PM, Single Stage to Orbit wrote:
> On Wed, 2012-03-07 at 21:06 -0500, Richard B. Gilbert wrote:
>
>> I don't WANT to try to live without Windows.
>
> Back in 1996, I switched to Linux. Haven't looked back since. It _is_
> possible to live happily afterwards.

My "click and drool" Windows does what I need it to do.  It's paid for.
I already know how to do what I need to do.  I have no motivation to
change anything!

On 3/8/2012 6:42 AM, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
> In article<KO6dnaoPhs19k8XSnZ2dnUVZ_uudnZ2d@giganews.com>, "Richard B. Gilbert"<rgilbert88@comcast.net>  writes:
>> {...snip...}
>>>
>>> Dunno.  I wouldn't buy another Motorola phone since I was suckered into
>>> purchasing the Razor.  What a PoS that was!
>>
>> Why do you say that?  I bought the Motorola RAZR V3m and have found it
>> satisfactory!
>
> The battery cover release switch was position such that ever time the
> phone was opened, the screen option would pop the batter cover off.
> The menu navigation buttons were too close and sensitive for use with
> the thumb (one handed) and even with index finger (two-handed).  I'd
> keep a pen close by in the early day and eventually, I just gave up
> trying to use them and just manually dialed the few numbers I'd call.
>
>
VZW sold me a leather cover that makes it just about impossible to
open the battery compartment without first removing the leather cover.
I've had it for about five years now and find it completely satisfactory!

On 3/8/2012 6:42 AM, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
> In article<KO6dnaoPhs19k8XSnZ2dnUVZ_uudnZ2d@giganews.com>, "Richard B. Gilbert"<rgilbert88@comcast.net>  writes:
>> {...snip...}
>>>
>>> Dunno.  I wouldn't buy another Motorola phone since I was suckered into
>>> purchasing the Razor.  What a PoS that was!
>>
>> Why do you say that?  I bought the Motorola RAZR V3m and have found it
>> satisfactory!
>
> The battery cover release switch was position such that ever time the
> phone was opened, the screen option would pop the batter cover off.
> The menu navigation buttons were too close and sensitive for use with
> the thumb (one handed) and even with index finger (two-handed).  I'd
> keep a pen close by in the early day and eventually, I just gave up
> trying to use them and just manually dialed the few numbers I'd call.
>
>
VZW sold me a leather cover that makes it just about impossible to
open the battery compartment without first removing the leather cover.
I've had it for about five years now and find it completely satisfactory!

In article <jLqdnQu6d_Q3WMXSnZ2dnUVZ_o-dnZ2d@giganews.com>, "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88@comcast.net> writes:
>On 3/8/2012 6:42 AM, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
>> In article<KO6dnaoPhs19k8XSnZ2dnUVZ_uudnZ2d@giganews.com>, "Richard B. Gilbert"<rgilbert88@comcast.net>  writes:
>>> {...snip...}
>>>>
>>>> Dunno.  I wouldn't buy another Motorola phone since I was suckered into
>>>> purchasing the Razor.  What a PoS that was!
>>>
>>> Why do you say that?  I bought the Motorola RAZR V3m and have found it
>>> satisfactory!
>>
>> The battery cover release switch was position such that ever time the
>> phone was opened, the screen option would pop the batter cover off.
>> The menu navigation buttons were too close and sensitive for use with
>> the thumb (one handed) and even with index finger (two-handed).  I'd
>> keep a pen close by in the early day and eventually, I just gave up
>> trying to use them and just manually dialed the few numbers I'd call.
>>
>>
>VZW sold me a leather cover that makes it just about impossible to
>open the battery compartment without first removing the leather cover.
>I've had it for about five years now and find it completely satisfactory!
>

It seems point-'n'-drool is sending 2 copies of your news postings!

-- 
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker    VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG

Well I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.

In article <WSqwJx1mzJRY@eisner.encompasserve.org>, koehler@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) writes:
>In article <8OCdnQ3maaq9icXSnZ2dnUVZ_hOdnZ2d@giganews.com>, "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88@comcast.net> writes:
>> 
>> I don't WANT to try to live without Windows. The early versions were a
>> mess.  Windows 2000 was usable.  Windows XP is what I currently use.  It
>> has been many years since I've seen the "Blue/Black Screen of Death".
>
>   Lucky fellow.  I haven't had one for days.

I've never had a BSoD! :P

-- 
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker    VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG

Well I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.

In article <I4CdnUFe450Kf8rSnZ2dnUVZ_sydnZ2d@mchsi.com>, "John E. Malmberg" <wb8tyw@qsl.network> writes:

> Need to give the congress some incentive:
> 
> Get a law passed that requires all members of congress and their spouses 
> to do their personal taxes with out any professional help or tax 
> software,

   Now there's a different take on a "circular" argument, since it's
   Congress that passes the laws.  You can't even get them to include
   themseleves in the do not call law.

In article <8OCdnQ3maaq9icXSnZ2dnUVZ_hOdnZ2d@giganews.com>, "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88@comcast.net> writes:
> 
> I don't WANT to try to live without Windows. The early versions were a
> mess.  Windows 2000 was usable.  Windows XP is what I currently use.  It
> has been many years since I've seen the "Blue/Black Screen of Death".

   Lucky fellow.  I haven't had one for days.

On Mon, 12 Mar 2012 14:53:05 +0000, VAXman- wrote:

> In article <WSqwJx1mzJRY@eisner.encompasserve.org>,
> koehler@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) writes:
>>In article <8OCdnQ3maaq9icXSnZ2dnUVZ_hOdnZ2d@giganews.com>, "Richard B.
>>Gilbert" <rgilbert88@comcast.net> writes:
>>> 
>>> I don't WANT to try to live without Windows. The early versions were a
>>> mess.  Windows 2000 was usable.  Windows XP is what I currently use. 
>>> It has been many years since I've seen the "Blue/Black Screen of
>>> Death".
>>
>>   Lucky fellow.  I haven't had one for days.
> 
> I've never had a BSoD! :P

Well, er, back when everyone in my office had both a Alpha PWS and a PC 
on their desk, we also suffered a lot of network problems.  All those 
Alphas were booted as cluster satellites, network problems would bring 
them back to the boot screen, and that screen colour was blue.

Our solitary Unix expert used to goad us with cries of "Blue Screen of 
Death" when that happened.

-- 
Paul Sture

In article <fgi139-ui41.ln1@news.sture.ch>, Paul Sture <paul@sture.ch> writes:
> On Mon, 12 Mar 2012 14:53:05 +0000, VAXman- wrote:
> 
> Well, er, back when everyone in my office had both a Alpha PWS and a PC 
> on their desk, we also suffered a lot of network problems.  All those 
> Alphas were booted as cluster satellites, network problems would bring 
> them back to the boot screen, and that screen colour was blue.
 
Welcome to the club, I know this all too well.
And yet people still talk about a "rock solid" OS ...
 
> Our solitary Unix expert used to goad us with cries of "Blue Screen of 
> Death" when that happened.

It's called ... wait ... "Affinity", ISTR,
Weendoze boxes and Alphas both crashing the same way.

On 3/12/2012 10:30 AM, Michael Kraemer wrote:
> In article<fgi139-ui41.ln1@news.sture.ch>, Paul Sture<paul@sture.ch>  writes:
>> On Mon, 12 Mar 2012 14:53:05 +0000, VAXman- wrote:
>>
>> Well, er, back when everyone in my office had both a Alpha PWS and a PC
>> on their desk, we also suffered a lot of network problems.  All those
>> Alphas were booted as cluster satellites, network problems would bring
>> them back to the boot screen, and that screen colour was blue.
>
> Welcome to the club, I know this all too well.
> And yet people still talk about a "rock solid" OS ...
>
>> Our solitary Unix expert used to goad us with cries of "Blue Screen of
>> Death" when that happened.
>
> It's called ... wait ... "Affinity", ISTR,
> Weendoze boxes and Alphas both crashing the same way.

It is normal and appropriate to see a crash of a VMS box under these 
circumstances (too-long temporary loss of network connectivity resulting 
in a CLUEXIT bugcheck). When a node is a member of a VMS cluster and it 
loses connectivity with the rest of the cluster for more than 
RECNXINTERVAL seconds, and the rest of the cluster retains quorum, the 
rest of the cluster continues on after a cluster state transition, 
during which they discard any locks the unreachable node may have held. 
When the node has network connectivity restored, it discovers that it 
has been removed from the cluster and any locks it holds are no longer 
valid, so it cannot continue from where it left off, and it must reboot 
to rejoin the cluster again.

This does not represent a bug or problem in the OS; it is the 
appropriate reaction to a lengthy problem in the network. VMS is doing 
exactly the right thing under the circumstances to protect the data.

Another important distinction is that a VMS cluster node is smart enough 
that when it loses connectivity with the rest of the cluster, it 
voluntarily keeps its mitts off the shared resources like disks, to 
avoid corruption due to uncoordinated access. In a Linux cluster, nodes 
aren't that smart and the rest of the cluster has to try to forcibly 
"fence" the node off from the shared resources by powering it off, 
disabling its SAN and/or network ports, etc. If the fencing operation 
fails, shared resources could be corrupted. If two nodes (or two subsets 
of the cluster) try to fence each other off, both might go down at once.

Another advantage of the VMS approach is that if a node or a subset of 
nodes loses quorum, while they keep their hands off the shared resources 
they also retain all the context they had, so if it turns out they are 
the only surviving subset of the cluster, manual intervention in the 
form of a few commands at the console or a few clicks under the 
Availability Manager GUI and they can continue on from right where they 
left off. In a Linux (or Serviceguard) cluster once a node loses quorum 
it must always reboot to rejoin the cluster.

Keith Parris schrieb:

> 
> This does not represent a bug or problem in the OS; 

This problem persisted since the days of VAX and BNC ethernet cabling
and wasn't solved with Alpha's and TP cabling, so I agree
it must be a feature, not a bug. Or maybe one should call it
"bug by design"?

> it is the 
> appropriate reaction to a lengthy problem in the network. VMS is doing 
> exactly the right thing under the circumstances to protect the data.

Crashing an entire workstation cluster due to some network problem
can hardly be called "the right thing".
At least not of this cluster has to perform serious monitoring
tasks and thus has to be "up" all the time.
And certainly not when Unix boxen sharing data over the very same
network have no such problems.

Michael Kraemer wrote:

> Crashing an entire workstation cluster due to some network problem
> can hardly be called "the right thing".


Actually, it unfortunatly is.  If a network problem results in possible
cluster partitioning, or nodes that got locked due to loss of quorum but
whose view of the cluster became stale ( no update to locks, logical
names and all thsoe shared structures), then the best way is to simply
force that node to reboot to ensure its stale data is not used.


Say you had application X running on the local node. It had a lock on a
remote node as well as on the local node.

When the link is broken, node X freezes due to loss of quorum. Rest of
cluster will eventually kick that node out after the recnxinterval
timeout. When this happens, the surviving cluster will zap all locks
that X had.

Now, node X still thinks that it has a lock on both the local and remote
files. The rest of the cluster sees X has having no locks.

If you allowed X to rejoin the cluster, you can't merge the 2 lock
tables because meanwhile, application on node Y might have taken a lock
and started to use that remote file (since that file became lockable
once node X was declared lost).

This is where the real VMS engineering did shine. They made unpopular
decisions (such as forcing a crash, or the much hated RWAST and RWMBX
states) because they did spend the time to think about all the
implications and saw possibilities where there would be corruption and
made damned sure that it wouldn't happen.

JF Mezei schrieb:

> This is where the real VMS engineering did shine. They made unpopular
> decisions (such as forcing a crash, or the much hated RWAST and RWMBX
> states) because they did spend the time to think about all the
> implications and saw possibilities where there would be corruption and
> made damned sure that it wouldn't happen.

In VMS logic there might be more or less good reasons
for such actions, but at the bottom line it appears as
committing suicide for fear of death.
It also leaves the notorious mantra
"when downtime is no option" a bit dubious, to say the least.

On Mar 13, 11:02=A0pm, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spam...@vaxination.ca> wrote:
> Michael Kraemer wrote:
> > Crashing an entire workstation cluster due to some network problem
> > can hardly be called "the right thing".
>
> Actually, it unfortunatly is. =A0If a network problem results in possible
> cluster partitioning, or nodes that got locked due to loss of quorum but
> whose view of the cluster became stale ( no update to locks, logical
> names and all thsoe shared structures), then the best way is to simply
> force that node to reboot to ensure its stale data is not used.
>
> Say you had application X running on the local node. It had a lock on a
> remote node as well as on the local node.
>
> When the link is broken, node X freezes due to loss of quorum. Rest of
> cluster will eventually kick that node out after the recnxinterval
> timeout. When this happens, the surviving cluster will zap all locks
> that X had.
>
> Now, node X still thinks that it has a lock on both the local and remote
> files. The rest of the cluster sees X has having no locks.
>
> If you allowed X to rejoin the cluster, you can't merge the 2 lock
> tables because meanwhile, application on node Y might have taken a lock
> and started to use that remote file (since that file became lockable
> once node X was declared lost).
>
> This is where the real VMS engineering did shine. They made unpopular
> decisions (such as forcing a crash, or the much hated RWAST and RWMBX
> states) because they did spend the time to think about all the
> implications and saw possibilities where there would be corruption and
> made damned sure that it wouldn't happen.


JF, you seem to be assuming that UNIX-like OSes and UNIX-based apps
and the purchasers and users of such things care about these things
called locks. The vast majority don't care about locks, whereas as you
rightly note, these things and their behaviour in "unusual"
circumstances are core to the design of VMS.

So, is the lack of proper mandatory locking in UNIX a bug or a
feature?

The folks who designed VMS and the folks who choose to stay with VMS
see fast distributed locking (and the way it helps avoid undetected
corruption of customer data) as a feature

The folks who chose UNIX (which in the early mass market days was
usually for workstation-style boxes with no serious shared data to
speak of) found other solutions, and these days they have to accept
the occasional inevitable chaos if/when shared resources do get muxed
ip. Mostly they just choose not to have real shared resources. Which
has advantages and disadvantages.

In a sensible world, there'd be room for both approaches. Neither is
universally better, but in any given set of circumstances, one may be
more appropriate than the other.

Put another way, you wouldn't use a Porsche for shifting a ten ton
factory floor press, or a five axle low loader to impress the
girlfriend (well, er, maybe...). And no sensible person would try to
argue that either was "better" universally.

But in IT the choice of OS becomes a matter of quasi-religious faith
rather than a matter of evaluating fitness for purpose for any given
set of tasks. Not sure why, but we are where we are. Probably
something to do with the IT industry these days being a branch of the
fashion industry rather than the engineering-based discipline it once
was.

On 2012-03-13 15.22, Michael Kraemer wrote:
> Keith Parris schrieb:
>
>> it is the appropriate reaction to a lengthy problem in the network.
>> VMS is doing exactly the right thing under the circumstances to
>> protect the data.
>
> Crashing an entire workstation cluster due to some network problem
> can hardly be called "the right thing".
> At least not of this cluster has to perform serious monitoring
> tasks and thus has to be "up" all the time.
> And certainly not when Unix boxen sharing data over the very same
> network have no such problems.

True, since in Unix-land, the occasional corruption of data is 
considered an acceptable tradeoff.

	Johnny

Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2012-03-13 15.22, Michael Kraemer wrote:
>> Keith Parris schrieb:
>>
>>> it is the appropriate reaction to a lengthy problem in the network.
>>> VMS is doing exactly the right thing under the circumstances to
>>> protect the data.
>>
>> Crashing an entire workstation cluster due to some network problem
>> can hardly be called "the right thing".
>> At least not of this cluster has to perform serious monitoring
>> tasks and thus has to be "up" all the time.
>> And certainly not when Unix boxen sharing data over the very same
>> network have no such problems.
> 
> True, since in Unix-land, the occasional corruption of data is 
> considered an acceptable tradeoff.
> 
>     Johnny

Joining multiple computers into a cluster is not always a good idea.  Clusters have their 
uses.  But non-cluster also has it's uses.

As for a group of workstations, using one common system disk, and ethernet for their 
cluster interconnect, well, I would call that a "far from robust" configuration.  As 
usual, you're only as strong as your weakest link.

For real-time work, you cannot wait for a cluster to recover from a problem.  Say you're 
capturing real time data.  If you don't trust one system, you'd be better off with two or 
more independent systems, with independent power supplies, and the data feed split to go 
to every system.  Or for process control, and such.

I've never used a cluster.  Never needed the capability a cluster provides.  Very few of 
my customers ever needed a cluster.  VMS is an excellent OS even if you do not use the 
cluster capability.  Great development and operations capabilities.  DLM !!!  Logical 
names !!!

On Mon, 12 Mar 2012 16:30:01 +0000, Michael Kraemer wrote:

> In article <fgi139-ui41.ln1@news.sture.ch>, Paul Sture <paul@sture.ch>
> writes:
>> On Mon, 12 Mar 2012 14:53:05 +0000, VAXman- wrote:
>> 
>> Well, er, back when everyone in my office had both a Alpha PWS and a PC
>> on their desk, we also suffered a lot of network problems.  All those
>> Alphas were booted as cluster satellites, network problems would bring
>> them back to the boot screen, and that screen colour was blue.
>  
> Welcome to the club, I know this all too well. And yet people still talk
> about a "rock solid" OS ...
>  
>> Our solitary Unix expert used to goad us with cries of "Blue Screen of
>> Death" when that happened.
> 
> It's called ... wait ... "Affinity", ISTR, Weendoze boxes and Alphas
> both crashing the same way.

Oh yes, the default to Windows mode when the battery runs flat as well.  
That one is incredibly frustrating when you do a "simple reboot" on a 
system which has been running happily for months on end.  The mitigating 
factor there was that I only encountered it on home systems.

-- 
Paul Sture

On 3/13/2012 4:22 PM, Michael Kraemer wrote:
> Keith Parris wrote:
>> This does not represent a bug or problem in the OS;
>
> This problem persisted since the days of VAX and BNC ethernet cabling
> and wasn't solved with Alpha's and TP cabling, so I agree
> it must be a feature, not a bug. Or maybe one should call it
> "bug by design"?
>
>> it is the appropriate reaction to a lengthy problem in the network.
>> VMS is doing exactly the right thing under the circumstances to
>> protect the data.
>
> Crashing an entire workstation cluster due to some network problem
> can hardly be called "the right thing".
> At least not of this cluster has to perform serious monitoring
> tasks and thus has to be "up" all the time.
> And certainly not when Unix boxen sharing data over the very same
> network have no such problems.

If length network outages are the norm and the OpenVMS cluster must 
tolerate them, it's simple to raise the RECNXINTERVAL parameter 
sufficiently to allow the cluster to ride through the outage.

On 3/13/2012 5:31 PM, Michael Kraemer wrote:
> JF Mezei schrieb:
>> This is where the real VMS engineering did shine. They made unpopular
>> decisions (such as forcing a crash, or the much hated RWAST and RWMBX
>> states) because they did spend the time to think about all the
>> implications and saw possibilities where there would be corruption and
>> made damned sure that it wouldn't happen.
>
> In VMS logic there might be more or less good reasons
> for such actions, but at the bottom line it appears as
> committing suicide for fear of death.
> It also leaves the notorious mantra
> "when downtime is no option" a bit dubious, to say the least.

The trade-off here is between availability and cost.

If low cost is the most important, simply raising RECNXINTERVAL would be 
the answer. Systems would simply pause until the network problem was solved.

If availability is more important, then a more-reliable LAN (or more 
reduandant LAN -- VMS clusters have supported multiple redundant LAN 
rails since 7.3-2) would be the answer.

Johnny Billquist schrieb:

> 
> True, since in Unix-land, the occasional corruption of data is 
> considered an acceptable tradeoff.
> 

On these occasions (and in general) there wasn't corruption of data
on Unix.
There was, however, a corruption of service on VMS,
which was by far the larger damage.

David Froble schrieb:
> 
> Joining multiple computers into a cluster is not always a good idea.  
> Clusters have their uses.  But non-cluster also has it's uses.
> 
> As for a group of workstations, using one common system disk, and 
> ethernet for their cluster interconnect, well, I would call that a "far 
> from robust" configuration.  As usual, you're only as strong as your 
> weakest link.

Well, this was a very common configuration
in the late 1980s/early 1990s. I'd say, VMS owes its former
popularity to such clusters. And the people who run it
claimed it was far superior to a collection of networked Unix boxen
(which I wasn't even allowed to call "cluster").
Unfortunately, as mentioned, the allegedly inferior Unix collection
turned out to be more robust at the bottom line.

> 
> For real-time work, you cannot wait for a cluster to recover from a 
> problem.  Say you're capturing real time data.  If you don't trust one 
> system, you'd be better off with two or more independent systems, with 
> independent power supplies, and the data feed split to go to every 
> system.  Or for process control, and such.
> 
> I've never used a cluster.  Never needed the capability a cluster 
> provides.  Very few of my customers ever needed a cluster.  VMS is an 
> excellent OS even if you do not use the cluster capability. 

Hear hear.
Aren't we told over and over again how clustering
is *the* differentiating factor making VMS superior to
everything else?

> Great 
> development and operations capabilities.  DLM !!!  Logical names !!!

Yes, consistent logical name handling is certainly a plus.

On 2012-03-14 20.55, Michael Kraemer wrote:
> David Froble schrieb:
>>
>> Joining multiple computers into a cluster is not always a good idea.
>> Clusters have their uses. But non-cluster also has it's uses.
>>
>> As for a group of workstations, using one common system disk, and
>> ethernet for their cluster interconnect, well, I would call that a
>> "far from robust" configuration. As usual, you're only as strong as
>> your weakest link.
>
> Well, this was a very common configuration
> in the late 1980s/early 1990s. I'd say, VMS owes its former
> popularity to such clusters. And the people who run it
> claimed it was far superior to a collection of networked Unix boxen
> (which I wasn't even allowed to call "cluster").
> Unfortunately, as mentioned, the allegedly inferior Unix collection
> turned out to be more robust at the bottom line.

1. VMS clusters did not use ethernet originally.
2. Unix distributed networks using ethernet and shared disks is not 
robust at all. You must be totally uninformed if you claim this. Have 
you ever used a machine with an NFS root? Any time the server stopped, 
rebooted, or whatever, all clients *freeze*. Not even rebooting, unless 
you press the power switch. You just sit there waiting for the NFS 
server to wake up again.
3. Unix, using NFS, is weird and unreliable. File locking does not work 
properly. File renaming and deletion is troublesome, and deleting a file 
used over NFS is handled by actually not deleting the file, but instead 
renaming it to something starting with a period, so that you don't 
normally see it, creating the illusion that you deleted the file. 
Furthermore, security wise, it is a joke. You use mountd daemon to mount 
and access NFS disks, but if you know the file handles, you can totally 
skip the mounting, and thus also skip the permissions of the 
/etc/exports file.
4. Unix does normally not crash, but instead freeze. And not only if the 
network goes down, but also if the single machine serving the disk goes 
down. Also, if anything in the server configuration changes, all clients 
needs to be rebooted, no matter if the server comes back, since NFS 
don't allow any recovery in that case. And we are talking about very 
ungraceful rebooting here. No controlled take down. You'll have to reach 
for the reset or power switch, since controlled shutdown is impossible.

Oh, and by the way, these issues are not only relevant to machines 
having an NFS root. The same is true for any use of NFS. It's just that 
since the quoting reach back to "one common system disk", it boils down 
to the NFS root in Unix land.

You, as usual, have all kind of weird, uninformed claims and statements. 
You're more than a troll than anything else.

Go back to playing with Windows, and stop posting to this newsgroup, 
since you obviously have little to contribute anyway. And VMS and DEC 
bashing in general is not classified as "contributing".

>> For real-time work, you cannot wait for a cluster to recover from a
>> problem. Say you're capturing real time data. If you don't trust one
>> system, you'd be better off with two or more independent systems, with
>> independent power supplies, and the data feed split to go to every
>> system. Or for process control, and such.
>>
>> I've never used a cluster. Never needed the capability a cluster
>> provides. Very few of my customers ever needed a cluster. VMS is an
>> excellent OS even if you do not use the cluster capability.
>
> Hear hear.
> Aren't we told over and over again how clustering
> is *the* differentiating factor making VMS superior to
> everything else?

If cluster is what people need, then VMS does it better than Unix (by a 
long shot). Most people do not need clustering. What does that prove?

	Johnny

Johnny Billquist <bqt@softjar.se> wrote:

(snip)
> 1. VMS clusters did not use ethernet originally.
> 2. Unix distributed networks using ethernet and shared disks is not 
> robust at all. You must be totally uninformed if you claim this. Have 
> you ever used a machine with an NFS root? Any time the server stopped, 
> rebooted, or whatever, all clients *freeze*. Not even rebooting, unless 
> you press the power switch. You just sit there waiting for the NFS 
> server to wake up again.

I haven't done it for a while, but most often you can reboot without
accessing the specific disk.

> 3. Unix, using NFS, is weird and unreliable. File locking does not work 
> properly. 

In general, Unix doesn't do much file locking, and, yes the NFS
implementation is especially troublesome.

> File renaming and deletion is troublesome, and deleting a file 
> used over NFS is handled by actually not deleting the file, but instead 
> renaming it to something starting with a period, so that you don't 
> normally see it, creating the illusion that you deleted the file. 

That should only happen if the file is open when you delete it.
The client should then delete the file when it is closed. If the
client crashes before it gets to close it, the file won't be delete.

Unix convention is that if you delete an open file, it stays around
until closed, though the name is removed from the directory.
It isn't possible to do that with a stateless NFS server.

> Furthermore, security wise, it is a joke. You use mountd daemon to mount 
> and access NFS disks, but if you know the file handles, you can totally 
> skip the mounting, and thus also skip the permissions of the 
> /etc/exports file.

I thought it was supposed to be better now, but it is best for
local networks where you trust the users.

> 4. Unix does normally not crash, but instead freeze. And not only if the 
> network goes down, but also if the single machine serving the disk goes 
> down. Also, if anything in the server configuration changes, all clients 
> needs to be rebooted, no matter if the server comes back, since NFS 
> don't allow any recovery in that case. And we are talking about very 
> ungraceful rebooting here. No controlled take down. You'll have to reach 
> for the reset or power switch, since controlled shutdown is impossible.

I am not sure exactly how much has to change. If something relating
to the specific disk changes, then yes. 

I once sold a server while clients still had the disk mounted.
If you are fast, you can umount before the disk is accessed, but
otherwise, yes, reboot is the only way.

(snip)

> Go back to playing with Windows, and stop posting to this newsgroup, 
> since you obviously have little to contribute anyway. And VMS and DEC 
> bashing in general is not classified as "contributing".

There used to be free from MS an NFS client and server for NT
and NT based systems. I am not sure about Vista and later.

-- glen

On Mon, 12 Mar 2012 16:30:01 +0000, Michael Kraemer wrote:

> In article <fgi139-ui41.ln1@news.sture.ch>, Paul Sture <paul@sture.ch>
> writes:
>> On Mon, 12 Mar 2012 14:53:05 +0000, VAXman- wrote:
>> 
>> Well, er, back when everyone in my office had both a Alpha PWS and a PC
>> on their desk, we also suffered a lot of network problems.  All those
>> Alphas were booted as cluster satellites, network problems would bring
>> them back to the boot screen, and that screen colour was blue.
>  
> Welcome to the club, I know this all too well. And yet people still talk
> about a "rock solid" OS ...
>  
>> Our solitary Unix expert used to goad us with cries of "Blue Screen of
>> Death" when that happened.
> 
> It's called ... wait ... "Affinity", ISTR, Weendoze boxes and Alphas
> both crashing the same way.

Wash your mouth out with soap for using the "A"-word :-)

But this scenario does make one wonder about the headlong rush to the 
cloud...



-- 
Paul Sture

On Tue, 13 Mar 2012 21:14:20 -0400, David Froble wrote:

> Joining multiple computers into a cluster is not always a good idea.
> Clusters have their uses.  But non-cluster also has it's uses.
> 
> As for a group of workstations, using one common system disk, and
> ethernet for their cluster interconnect, well, I would call that a "far
> from robust" configuration.  As usual, you're only as strong as your
> weakest link.

There were a couple of other problems here.  When twenty odd workstations 
were trying to reboot, when the network came back they all did it more or 
less at once.  Until I changed the workstations to use Dump Off System 
Disk (DOSD), the server system disk would go into a full shadow merge (or 
was it shadow copy?).  This caused further problems:

a) the boot times were exceptionally long
b) some part of DECnet Phase V could time out and you'd have to reboot 
the workstation later to recover from this

On the plus side, our team never lost any data from this, but I cannot 
speak for the DBAs.



-- 
Paul Sture

On Thu, 15 Mar 2012 11:46:27 +0000, glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:

> There used to be free from MS an NFS client and server for NT and NT
> based systems. I am not sure about Vista and later.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/14/windows_8_server/

"Why Windows 8 server is a game-changer

....

Windows 8 includes an NFS stack rewritten from the ground up. It solves a 
lot of the compatibility issues suffered by previous implementations and 
offers massive performance increases. They aren't implementing some 
kludged in-house frankenversion either: Microsoft bit the bullet and paid 
to have it done right."

And I have long moaned about the hostile CLI on Windows. It appears that 
this has been addressed:

"Compared to its precedents, Server 8 was designed backwards; everything 
in Server 8 can be manipulated via APIs and PowerShell scriptlets. GUIs 
are simply ease-of-use layers that offer a visual method of scriptlet 
control.

That means that anyone can build an interface to control any aspect of 
Server 8 from any operating system they wish. If you want to run a fleet 
of Windows 8 servers from Linux, Microsoft is not only happy to help, it 
built components for that."



-- 
Paul Sture

In article <6fe328db-1f36-425c-8b3e-59e33efaef18@k6g2000vbz.googlegroups.com>, John Wallace <johnwallace4@yahoo.co.uk> writes:

> So, is the lack of proper mandatory locking in UNIX a bug or a
> feature?

   One of the biggest bugs I've ever seen.  Generally worked around by
   paying big bucks for a DBMS when a VMS keyed-indexed file with sharing 
   and mandatory locking would do.

   A good DBMS has lots of other features, too, and if you need those,
   pay for them no matter what the underlying OS.

Michael Kraemer wrote:
> Johnny Billquist schrieb:
> 
>>
>> True, since in Unix-land, the occasional corruption of data is 
>> considered an acceptable tradeoff.
>>
> 
> On these occasions (and in general) there wasn't corruption of data
> on Unix.
> There was, however, a corruption of service on VMS,
> which was by far the larger damage.
> 

You should not use a hammer to drive a screw, and you should not use a screwdriver to 
hammer a nail.

 From reading your posts, I can only assume that you are blaming VMS for other problems, 
such as network failure, and poorly configured systems for whatever your requirements are.

If you're posting here to show that you've been able to poorly configure computer systems, 
life is too short, get one.

In article <jjroef$g1t$1@solani.org>, Michael Kraemer <M.Kraemer@gsi.de> writes:
> 
> On these occasions (and in general) there wasn't corruption of data
> on Unix.
> There was, however, a corruption of service on VMS,
> which was by far the larger damage.

   How did you access the UNIX system while the network was down?

On 2012-03-15 04.46, glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:
> Johnny Billquist<bqt@softjar.se>  wrote:
>
> (snip)
>> 1. VMS clusters did not use ethernet originally.
>> 2. Unix distributed networks using ethernet and shared disks is not
>> robust at all. You must be totally uninformed if you claim this. Have
>> you ever used a machine with an NFS root? Any time the server stopped,
>> rebooted, or whatever, all clients *freeze*. Not even rebooting, unless
>> you press the power switch. You just sit there waiting for the NFS
>> server to wake up again.
>
> I haven't done it for a while, but most often you can reboot without
> accessing the specific disk.

If the root fs is over NFS, you obviously can't...
But yes, if you can totally avoid ever accessing the NFS file system, 
then you can (hopefully) carry on.

>> 3. Unix, using NFS, is weird and unreliable. File locking does not work
>> properly.
>
> In general, Unix doesn't do much file locking, and, yes the NFS
> implementation is especially troublesome.

Indeed. But it is worse. For example, if a file is opened for execution, 
Unix prevents you from writing to that file. This semantic is also lost 
if the file is accessed over NFS, meaning you can write to a binary that 
is being executed, causing the memory of that executable to randomly 
corrupted at execution time, depending on when/if page in from the 
binary happens.

>> File renaming and deletion is troublesome, and deleting a file
>> used over NFS is handled by actually not deleting the file, but instead
>> renaming it to something starting with a period, so that you don't
>> normally see it, creating the illusion that you deleted the file.
>
> That should only happen if the file is open when you delete it.

Right.

> The client should then delete the file when it is closed. If the
> client crashes before it gets to close it, the file won't be delete.

Right.

> Unix convention is that if you delete an open file, it stays around
> until closed, though the name is removed from the directory.
> It isn't possible to do that with a stateless NFS server.

Right. So when NFS gets involved, it becomes a bunch of hacks, where 
data corruption can happen (that Unix otherwise will not allow), and 
weird solutions are used to get around the different semantics in NFS.

>> Furthermore, security wise, it is a joke. You use mountd daemon to mount
>> and access NFS disks, but if you know the file handles, you can totally
>> skip the mounting, and thus also skip the permissions of the
>> /etc/exports file.
>
> I thought it was supposed to be better now, but it is best for
> local networks where you trust the users.

Yes.

>> 4. Unix does normally not crash, but instead freeze. And not only if the
>> network goes down, but also if the single machine serving the disk goes
>> down. Also, if anything in the server configuration changes, all clients
>> needs to be rebooted, no matter if the server comes back, since NFS
>> don't allow any recovery in that case. And we are talking about very
>> ungraceful rebooting here. No controlled take down. You'll have to reach
>> for the reset or power switch, since controlled shutdown is impossible.
>
> I am not sure exactly how much has to change. If something relating
> to the specific disk changes, then yes.

No. It's basically if anything appears different in the hardware 
configuration. Enumeration of devices are a part of NFS, and if that 
enumeration is suspected to have changed, then all old file handles are 
invalidated. Note that it does not necessarily have to have changed, 
it's just the suspicion that it has changed that is enough to trigger this.

> I once sold a server while clients still had the disk mounted.
> If you are fast, you can umount before the disk is accessed, but
> otherwise, yes, reboot is the only way.

Right. As long as the unmounting itself does not imply any disk access, 
which it very well might, since you can have caching.

	Johnny

On Mar 15, 3:52=A0pm, David Froble <da...@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
> Michael Kraemer wrote:
> > Johnny Billquist schrieb:
>
> >> True, since in Unix-land, the occasional corruption of data is
> >> considered an acceptable tradeoff.
>
> > On these occasions (and in general) there wasn't corruption of data
> > on Unix.
> > There was, however, a corruption of service on VMS,
> > which was by far the larger damage.
>
> You should not use a hammer to drive a screw, and you should not use a sc=
rewdriver to
> hammer a nail.
>
> =A0From reading your posts, I can only assume that you are blaming VMS fo=
r other problems,
> such as network failure, and poorly configured systems for whatever your =
requirements are.
>
> If you're posting here to show that you've been able to poorly configure =
computer systems,
> life is too short, get one.

"You should not use a hammer to drive a screw, and you should not use
a screwdriver to hammer a nail."

People have been using hammers to drive screws and vice versa in IT
for years, and hardly anybody ever worries about it and even fewer
people are ever held accountable for getting things screwed up. :(

Johnny Billquist <bqt@softjar.se> wrote:

(snip regarding NFS mounts of disks that go away.)

>> I haven't done it for a while, but most often you can reboot without
>> accessing the specific disk.

> If the root fs is over NFS, you obviously can't...
> But yes, if you can totally avoid ever accessing the NFS file system, 
> then you can (hopefully) carry on.

It is possible, but not so common, to have an NFS root and also
export disks to other NFS clients. 

(snip, I also wrote)

>> In general, Unix doesn't do much file locking, and, yes the NFS
>> implementation is especially troublesome.

> Indeed. But it is worse. For example, if a file is opened for execution, 
> Unix prevents you from writing to that file. 

Not on systems that I used. Which ones do that?

> This semantic is also lost if the file is accessed over NFS, 
> meaning you can write to a binary that is being executed, 
> causing the memory of that executable to randomly 
> corrupted at execution time, depending on when/if page in 
> from the binary happens.

That does happen.

(snip)

>> Unix convention is that if you delete an open file, it stays around
>> until closed, though the name is removed from the directory.
>> It isn't possible to do that with a stateless NFS server.

> Right. So when NFS gets involved, it becomes a bunch of hacks, where 
> data corruption can happen (that Unix otherwise will not allow), and 
> weird solutions are used to get around the different semantics in NFS.

Well, first only do hard mounts. Soft or interruptable mounts
definitely can cause those problems. But hard mounts will wait
forever for the server to come back. (Once I had to shut down a 
server for a weekend. The clients waited for it to come back.)

(snip)
>> I am not sure exactly how much has to change. If something relating
>> to the specific disk changes, then yes.

> No. It's basically if anything appears different in the hardware 
> configuration. Enumeration of devices are a part of NFS, and if that 
> enumeration is suspected to have changed, then all old file handles 
> are invalidated. Note that it does not necessarily have to have 
> changed, it's just the suspicion that it has changed that is 
> enough to trigger this.

It is likely different on different systems. I am pretty sure
that I did some changes where they didn't go stale, and others
where they did.

(snip)

-- glen

On 2012-03-15 15.34, glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:
> Johnny Billquist<bqt@softjar.se>  wrote:
>
> (snip regarding NFS mounts of disks that go away.)
>
>>> In general, Unix doesn't do much file locking, and, yes the NFS
>>> implementation is especially troublesome.
>
>> Indeed. But it is worse. For example, if a file is opened for execution,
>> Unix prevents you from writing to that file.
>
> Not on systems that I used. Which ones do that?

Linux and NetBSD at least. Can't remember if I've tried on others...

Example run, with a local copy of sleep (on a Linux system):

gazonk:/tmp> ./foo 1m &
[2] 19490
gazonk:/tmp> cat > foo
foo: Text file busy.
gazonk:/tmp>

Exactly the same results with NetBSD.

The error code is ETXTBSY

To quote the man-page:
      26 ETXTBSY Text file busy.  The new process was a pure procedure 
(shared
              text) file which was open for writing by another process, or
              while the pure procedure file was being executed an 
open(2) call
              requested write access.

>> This semantic is also lost if the file is accessed over NFS,
>> meaning you can write to a binary that is being executed,
>> causing the memory of that executable to randomly
>> corrupted at execution time, depending on when/if page in
>> from the binary happens.
>
> That does happen.

Indeed. Unix networking just working without problems... Yeah right...

>>> I am not sure exactly how much has to change. If something relating
>>> to the specific disk changes, then yes.
>
>> No. It's basically if anything appears different in the hardware
>> configuration. Enumeration of devices are a part of NFS, and if that
>> enumeration is suspected to have changed, then all old file handles
>> are invalidated. Note that it does not necessarily have to have
>> changed, it's just the suspicion that it has changed that is
>> enough to trigger this.
>
> It is likely different on different systems. I am pretty sure
> that I did some changes where they didn't go stale, and others
> where they did.

It most probably is. After all, the basic problem is that the server 
must know that file handles are still valid in order to accept them. If 
it can be clever about it, it can be more forgiving. So it all depends 
on the server. There are no guarantees on how this works. Every 
implementation does its own thing.

	Johnny

On Mar 15, 11:08=A0pm, Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> wrote:
> On 2012-03-15 15.34, glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:
>
> > Johnny Billquist<b...@softjar.se> =A0wrote:
>
> > (snip regarding NFS mounts of disks that go away.)
>
> >>> In general, Unix doesn't do much file locking, and, yes the NFS
> >>> implementation is especially troublesome.
>
> >> Indeed. But it is worse. For example, if a file is opened for executio=
n,
> >> Unix prevents you from writing to that file.
>
> > Not on systems that I used. Which ones do that?
>
> Linux and NetBSD at least. Can't remember if I've tried on others...
>
> Example run, with a local copy of sleep (on a Linux system):
>
> gazonk:/tmp> ./foo 1m &
> [2] 19490
> gazonk:/tmp> cat > foo
> foo: Text file busy.
> gazonk:/tmp>
>
> Exactly the same results with NetBSD.
>
> The error code is ETXTBSY
>
> To quote the man-page:
> =A0 =A0 =A0 26 ETXTBSY Text file busy. =A0The new process was a pure proc=
edure
> (shared
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 text) file which was open for writing by anot=
her process, or
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 while the pure procedure file was being execu=
ted an
> open(2) call
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 requested write access.
>
> >> This semantic is also lost if the file is accessed over NFS,
> >> meaning you can write to a binary that is being executed,
> >> causing the memory of that executable to randomly
> >> corrupted at execution time, depending on when/if page in
> >> from the binary happens.
>
> > That does happen.
>
> Indeed. Unix networking just working without problems... Yeah right...
>
> >>> I am not sure exactly how much has to change. If something relating
> >>> to the specific disk changes, then yes.
>
> >> No. It's basically if anything appears different in the hardware
> >> configuration. Enumeration of devices are a part of NFS, and if that
> >> enumeration is suspected to have changed, then all old file handles
> >> are invalidated. Note that it does not necessarily have to have
> >> changed, it's just the suspicion that it has changed that is
> >> enough to trigger this.
>
> > It is likely different on different systems. I am pretty sure
> > that I did some changes where they didn't go stale, and others
> > where they did.
>
> It most probably is. After all, the basic problem is that the server
> must know that file handles are still valid in order to accept them. If
> it can be clever about it, it can be more forgiving. So it all depends
> on the server. There are no guarantees on how this works. Every
> implementation does its own thing.
>
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 Johnny

NFS was originally stateless by design. Fundamentally that means any
server has no way of knowing what its client is up to, all it can do
is serve up the requested blocks.

The server cannot know whether the client still has a file open or
not. That has advantages and disadvantages.

After 15 years of statelessness being an advantage, the NFS people
finally decided in NFS v4/RFC3530 (2003) that statelessness was A Bad
Thing and that NFS ought to have state awareness. Why so? Because
"Windows clients need state awareness" was the excuse. UNIX apps
already had decades-old workarounds for the lack of locking on UNIX.

Odd that.

Bob Koehler schrieb:
> In article <jjroef$g1t$1@solani.org>, Michael Kraemer <M.Kraemer@gsi.de> writes:
> 
>>On these occasions (and in general) there wasn't corruption of data
>>on Unix.
>>There was, however, a corruption of service on VMS,
>>which was by far the larger damage.
> 
> 
>    How did you access the UNIX system while the network was down?
> 

On these occasions, when VMS went down, the network was still "up",
but loaded with crap. It was no fun to work with Unix either,
but with some patience, it was possible.

Paul Sture schrieb:
> On Mon, 12 Mar 2012 16:30:01 +0000, Michael Kraemer wrote:
> 
> 
>>In article <fgi139-ui41.ln1@news.sture.ch>, Paul Sture <paul@sture.ch>
>>writes:
>>
>>>On Mon, 12 Mar 2012 14:53:05 +0000, VAXman- wrote:
>>>
>>>Well, er, back when everyone in my office had both a Alpha PWS and a PC
>>>on their desk, we also suffered a lot of network problems.  All those
>>>Alphas were booted as cluster satellites, network problems would bring
>>>them back to the boot screen, and that screen colour was blue.
>>
>> 
>>Welcome to the club, I know this all too well. And yet people still talk
>>about a "rock solid" OS ...
>> 
>>
>>>Our solitary Unix expert used to goad us with cries of "Blue Screen of
>>>Death" when that happened.
>>
>>It's called ... wait ... "Affinity", ISTR, Weendoze boxes and Alphas
>>both crashing the same way.
> 
> 
> Wash your mouth out with soap for using the "A"-word :-)

Well, considering the praise of Weendoze in this group,
can't be that big of a crime ... :-)

> But this scenario does make one wonder about the headlong rush to the 
> cloud...

seems to be the renaissance of the good old computer centre,
you just use a GUI nowadays, rather than bringing a
pile of punched cards.

Johnny Billquist schrieb:

> Go back to playing with Windows, and stop posting to this newsgroup, 

There's always the killfile ...

Paul Sture schrieb:

> There were a couple of other problems here.  When twenty odd workstations 
> were trying to reboot, when the network came back they all did it more or 
> less at once. 

Yep, rather messy.
Plus, when the network still had persistent/intermittent problems,
the whole configuration remained dead in the water.

> Until I changed the workstations to use Dump Off System 
> Disk (DOSD), the server system disk would go into a full shadow merge (or 
> was it shadow copy?).  This caused further problems:
> 
> a) the boot times were exceptionally long
> b) some part of DECnet Phase V could time out and you'd have to reboot 
> the workstation later to recover from this

I don't know if this would have helped in the cases I experienced.
But I'm rather sure the responsible VMS experts would have tried it,
if possible. Too embarrassing, a VMS cluster unavailable for hours.

> On the plus side, our team never lost any data from this, but I cannot 
> speak for the DBAs.

On Fri, 16 Mar 2012 05:19:22 +0100, Michael Kraemer wrote:

> Paul Sture schrieb:
> 
>> There were a couple of other problems here.  When twenty odd
>> workstations were trying to reboot, when the network came back they all
>> did it more or less at once.
> 
> Yep, rather messy.
> Plus, when the network still had persistent/intermittent problems, the
> whole configuration remained dead in the water.

We didn't usually have such a long outage.  Sometimes it hit the PCs 
rather than the VMS systems, and in these cases we could carry on 
working, but the PC only folks were out of luck.  With a bit of luck, you 
could save any work in progress to your local PC disk, but that was not
always the case.

>> Until I changed the workstations to use Dump Off System Disk (DOSD),
>> the server system disk would go into a full shadow merge (or was it
>> shadow copy?).  This caused further problems:
>> 
>> a) the boot times were exceptionally long b) some part of DECnet Phase
>> V could time out and you'd have to reboot the workstation later to
>> recover from this
> 
> I don't know if this would have helped in the cases I experienced. But
> I'm rather sure the responsible VMS experts would have tried it, if
> possible. Too embarrassing, a VMS cluster unavailable for hours.

It definitely helped us, but ISTR having more than one go at 
implementing DOSD.  I finally acquired some definitive instructions
amd those worked fine.  I was the only one on our team to think about
this solution, so maybe there were many other system managers out there
who didn't know about it.

Prior to getting DOSD working we would drop the system disk non-master
shadow set until the whole cluster was up.  Not an ideal workaround but
it did the job.

-- 
Paul Sture

On Thu, 15 Mar 2012 12:57:45 -0700, John Wallace wrote:

> "You should not use a hammer to drive a screw, and you should not use a
> screwdriver to hammer a nail."

I've seen construction pros use a hammer to get a screw started. :_)
 
> People have been using hammers to drive screws and vice versa in IT for
> years, and hardly anybody ever worries about it and even fewer people
> are ever held accountable for getting things screwed up.

An adage from the building trade:

"When all else fails, use 6 inch nails."



-- 
Paul Sture

On Fri, 16 Mar 2012 04:59:45 +0100, Michael Kraemer wrote:

> Paul Sture schrieb:
>>>
>>>It's called ... wait ... "Affinity", ISTR, Weendoze boxes and Alphas
>>>both crashing the same way.
>> 
>> 
>> Wash your mouth out with soap for using the "A"-word :-)
> 
> Well, considering the praise of Weendoze in this group, can't be that
> big of a crime ... :-)

Windows has on the other hand had a lot of investment in the last few 
years.. Can I say IPSEC? :-)
 
>> But this scenario does make one wonder about the headlong rush to the
>> cloud...
> 
> seems to be the renaissance of the good old computer centre, you just
> use a GUI nowadays, rather than bringing a pile of punched cards.

It's cyclical.  This time around you don't need to physically visit 
someone else's premises.



-- 
Paul Sture

On Mar 16, 4:19=A0am, Michael Kraemer <M.Krae...@gsi.de> wrote:
> Paul Sture schrieb:
>
> > There were a couple of other problems here. =A0When twenty odd workstat=
ions
> > were trying to reboot, when the network came back they all did it more =
or
> > less at once.
>
> Yep, rather messy.
> Plus, when the network still had persistent/intermittent problems,
> the whole configuration remained dead in the water.
>
> > Until I changed the workstations to use Dump Off System
> > Disk (DOSD), the server system disk would go into a full shadow merge (=
or
> > was it shadow copy?). =A0This caused further problems:
>
> > a) the boot times were exceptionally long
> > b) some part of DECnet Phase V could time out and you'd have to reboot
> > the workstation later to recover from this
>
> I don't know if this would have helped in the cases I experienced.
> But I'm rather sure the responsible VMS experts would have tried it,
> if possible. Too embarrassing, a VMS cluster unavailable for hours.
>
> > On the plus side, our team never lost any data from this, but I cannot
> > speak for the DBAs.
>
>

There are loosely coupled distributed system architectures and there
are tightly coupled distributed system architectures. They have
different characteristics and difference advantages and disadvantages.

Anyone who tries to force fit the wrong one in any given set of
circumstances is naive, or an idiot, or being forced to follow the
instructions of a naive idiot. It does happen occasionally.

VMS can do loosely coupled distributed systems using various
mechanisms, or it can do (most people's definition of) tightly coupled
distributed systems using local or wide area VMSclusters, wide area
HBVS, etc. With VMS these things are relatively well architected and
can be done relatively transparently to well designed applications and
will work well within their design constraints (and often beyond).
Making effective use of these facilities needs a certain level of
skill so they operate well under all conceivable circumstances.

UNIX and desktop-derived OSes can in general do loosely coupled
(exceptions apply). Beyond that there be dragons. But if it's cheap
and the price performance looks good on paper, who cares.

Well, actually, some people do care.

For certain relatively unusual requirements (such as a dual-redundant
real time SCADA system mentioned earlier by David), it may be that
neither generic tightly coupled system behaviour nor generic loosely
coupled system behaviour is appropriate. The generic tightly coupled
system behaviour introduces too much inter-dependence between co-
operating components and can introduce unacceptable delays during
transient states (e.g. cluster transitions). The generic loosely
coupled system behaviour introduces too much risk of data and control
inconsistency between co-operating systems. So in these niche cases
you end up building your application's own coupling mechanism which
shares the (SCADA or whatever) data and control information in
realtime between applications on different nodes, using well
characterised mechanisms and provides the exact behaviours the
application needs, while leaving the OS to get on and do its own
loosely coupled thing, largely unaware that there is a closely coupled
application running on top of the OS.

That's how an engineer (rather than a High Priest in the OS Wars)
might see it anyway.

The "unusable workstations" VMScluster scenario described earlier can
arise when the PHB makes a sensible decision to minimise system
management overhead by managing his workstations as a single
interconnected tightly coupled entity (rather than dozens of
separately managed loosely coupled entities) but then rather naively
chooses not to make the clearly understood necessary investment to
reduce the number of single points of failure in the resulting closely
coupled setup. In such a setup done right, you'd typically have
redundant storage, redundant boot and disk servers, and ideally some
resilience in the network itself. The consequences of not doing so
should be obvious. Proper design of a relatively simple system like
this is not rocket science, but nor is it just a matter of throwing
loosely coupled boxes together.

Summary: Once again, one size does not fit all. One OS, even one
approach, is not universally "better". "Better" ALWAYS implies better
at some specific set of requirements, even if the reader (or PHB,
whatever) is unwilling to acknowledge this.

On Mar 16, 8:31=A0am, Paul Sture <p...@sture.ch> wrote:
> On Fri, 16 Mar 2012 05:19:22 +0100, Michael Kraemer wrote:
> > Paul Sture schrieb:
>
> >> There were a couple of other problems here. =A0When twenty odd
> >> workstations were trying to reboot, when the network came back they al=
l
> >> did it more or less at once.
>
> > Yep, rather messy.
> > Plus, when the network still had persistent/intermittent problems, the
> > whole configuration remained dead in the water.
>
> We didn't usually have such a long outage. =A0Sometimes it hit the PCs
> rather than the VMS systems, and in these cases we could carry on
> working, but the PC only folks were out of luck. =A0With a bit of luck, y=
ou
> could save any work in progress to your local PC disk, but that was not
> always the case.
>
> >> Until I changed the workstations to use Dump Off System Disk (DOSD),
> >> the server system disk would go into a full shadow merge (or was it
> >> shadow copy?). =A0This caused further problems:
>
> >> a) the boot times were exceptionally long b) some part of DECnet Phase
> >> V could time out and you'd have to reboot the workstation later to
> >> recover from this
>
> > I don't know if this would have helped in the cases I experienced. But
> > I'm rather sure the responsible VMS experts would have tried it, if
> > possible. Too embarrassing, a VMS cluster unavailable for hours.
>
> It definitely helped us, but ISTR having more than one go at
> implementing DOSD. =A0I finally acquired some definitive instructions
> amd those worked fine. =A0I was the only one on our team to think about
> this solution, so maybe there were many other system managers out there
> who didn't know about it.
>
> Prior to getting DOSD working we would drop the system disk non-master
> shadow set until the whole cluster was up. =A0Not an ideal workaround but
> it did the job.
>
> --
> Paul Sture

The shadowed boot device vs DOSD scenario is an example of the need
for real experience and expertise in cases like this. The rest of it
mostly hopefully works out of the box, give or take, but there are
sometimes details hiding in dark corners which will get you if you are
unaware.

On 3/15/2012 9:47 PM, Michael Kraemer wrote:
> On these occasions, when VMS went down, the network was still "up",
> but loaded with crap. It was no fun to work with Unix either,
> but with some patience, it was possible.

One day at the site where I was working at the time a loop apparently 
developed in the IP network due to some sort of misconfiguration related 
to bridging (lack of Spanning Tree or some such). There was a flood of 
packets. None of the systems could communicate over IP, but LAT and 
DECnet and OpenVMS Cluster communications continued uninterrupted.

When the tsunami of garbage packets hit the VMS systems, the DEC chip 
(Tulip) based Ethernet adapters (i.e. DE500 series) kept going, but the 
Intel chip based (DE600) Ethernet adapters all locked up tight (this bug 
was fixed a few months later with a firmware revision).

On Fri, 16 Mar 2012 02:17:28 -0700, John Wallace wrote:

> On Mar 16, 8:31 am, Paul Sture <p...@sture.ch> wrote:
>> On Fri, 16 Mar 2012 05:19:22 +0100, Michael Kraemer wrote:
>> > Paul Sture schrieb:
>>
>> >> There were a couple of other problems here.  When twenty odd
>> >> workstations were trying to reboot, when the network came back they
>> >> all did it more or less at once.
>>
>> > Yep, rather messy.
>> > Plus, when the network still had persistent/intermittent problems,
>> > the whole configuration remained dead in the water.
>>
>> We didn't usually have such a long outage.  Sometimes it hit the PCs
>> rather than the VMS systems, and in these cases we could carry on
>> working, but the PC only folks were out of luck.  With a bit of luck,
>> you could save any work in progress to your local PC disk, but that was
>> not always the case.
>>
>> >> Until I changed the workstations to use Dump Off System Disk (DOSD),
>> >> the server system disk would go into a full shadow merge (or was it
>> >> shadow copy?).  This caused further problems:
>>
>> >> a) the boot times were exceptionally long b) some part of DECnet
>> >> Phase V could time out and you'd have to reboot the workstation
>> >> later to recover from this
>>
>> > I don't know if this would have helped in the cases I experienced.
>> > But I'm rather sure the responsible VMS experts would have tried it,
>> > if possible. Too embarrassing, a VMS cluster unavailable for hours.
>>
>> It definitely helped us, but ISTR having more than one go at
>> implementing DOSD.  I finally acquired some definitive instructions amd
>> those worked fine.  I was the only one on our team to think about this
>> solution, so maybe there were many other system managers out there who
>> didn't know about it.
>>
>> Prior to getting DOSD working we would drop the system disk non-master
>> shadow set until the whole cluster was up.  Not an ideal workaround but
>> it did the job.
>>
> 
> The shadowed boot device vs DOSD scenario is an example of the need for
> real experience and expertise in cases like this. The rest of it mostly
> hopefully works out of the box, give or take, but there are sometimes
> details hiding in dark corners which will get you if you are unaware.

I must admit I used to devour DSN articles avidly when that was 
available, and picked up a great deal of information you couldn't acquire 
unless you had experienced a particular dark corner yourself.

-- 
Paul Sture