From: Shane Dempsey (sdempsey at domain tssg.wit.ie)
Date: Fri 18 Feb 2000 - 12:49:06 GMT
Just a few comments in the body of the message.
----- Original Message -----
From: Miles <kcolfer at domain iol.ie>
To: ilug <ilug at domain linux.ie>
Sent: 18 February 2000 12:08
Subject: Re: [ILUG] Have you had your daily dose of reality?
> On Thu, 17 Feb 2000, John McDonnell jnr. wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 17 Feb 2000, Nick Hilliard wrote:
> > > http://www.dot-truth.com/
> > surely someone has come up with something to refute this propapganda by
> > now?
>
> Nah, here at Sun we're too busy soaking up all the free publicity to
> bother about Mc$oft's whining. It seems that so far all of the advertising
> for win2k has dissed Sun in some way. It looks like the Mc$oft marketing
> weenies are actually doing more work than the Sun marketing weenies to
> promote Sun as Mc$oft's no.1 competitor. Cheers guys! People who never
> heard of the company before are looking at these ads and thinking, "who
> are these Sun people that seem to have Micro$oft running so scared that
> they have to put them down at every opportunity?"
>
> While I am loth to admit that there is *some* truth in some of the stuff
> they say, it's interesting to note that they never make the distinction
> between a company that produces nothing but software that runs (if that's
> the word to use) on other people's hardware (them), and a company that
> produces both its own software and the hardware it runs on (us).
>
> I'll just look at a few of the points they make here (taking a
> microsoft-type approach and ignoring the bits I don't like):
>
You're forgetting the truely wonderful joysticks and gamepads
that Microsoft produce. Nice mice too.
>
> "In a comparison of transaction-processing-solution price performance, 88
> of the top 100 systems ran on Windows platforms"
>
> - kind of hard to check this seeing as the TPC website only shows the top
> 10.
Yep but you hardly think that the survey stopped at 10.
The issue is that we don't know who they're talking about
because the website only lists 10.
>
> "Today, a Solaris upgrade for a system with 16 to 32 processors costs
> $32,000. For a system with 33 to 64 processors, the cost is $90,000"
>
> - What has this got to do with Microsoft? They don't sell any hardware at
> all?
Yes but they're saying ( quite truthfully ) that SUN's boxes are
prohibitively
expensive. You gotta admit that this is the case. This is one of the
reasons that Linux is making inroads in the server market.
Its stable , cheap comes with a lot of tools and works with x86 machines.
> "Customers want PCs, not Sun's proprietary thin clients. A majority of US
> households value a personal computer as their most important appliance"
>
> - The Sunray isn't aimed at the household market.
What exactly is the Sunray aimed at ?
People who like Java and fish and who already have a Sparc based
server somewhere in the building ?
> "Sun's upcoming UltraSPARC III will require replacement of existing
> customer equipment."
>
> - Sure, and you can install Win2k on any old machine and expect it to
> work.
>
Agreed. WIn2k is bulky and needs lots of RAM, fast processors
and new equipment.
> "Confusion exists over Sun?s abandoned development tools and multiple new
> acquired tool platforms. (emphasis missing)"
>
> - the italics on 'acquired' on the webpage almost make it seem like a
> dirty word or something. So, Mc$oft have never, ever bought out anyone
> else?
>
Yeah, I know what you're saying here but that isn't what they mean.
This is FUD at its best. They're saying that SUN had some dev tools
that sucked ass ( true ) and they're saying that they can't see how
they're going to plug in essentially someone else's devtool and provide
that as the solution for development for SUN's projects.
This compares with Visual Studio which is a wonderful development
environment for windows development.
> "Analyst reports have repeatedly raised the issue of reliability problems
> with Sun platforms"
>
> - And no-one has ever complained about Windows?
>
Agreed. This is total FUD. The Windows 1/2/3X/9X variants
were all totally unstable. It definitely doesn't mention that.
> "Windows runs 25 percent of Web sites worldwide; Sun runs 19 percent"
>
> - This almost makes it sound like Windoze is the #1 webserver on the
> planet. Apache (55% market share), anyone?
> - It ain't hard to get that much market share when up until recently
> almost every single Compaq, Dell and Gateway server sold had some breed of
> windows pre-installed.
Agreed aswell.
> "In one day alone, Dec. 7, 1999, a leading auction site suffered a system
> outage of more than three hours when both Sun E10000 servers running the
> site's back-end auction system failed. Meanwhile, the company's Web site
> front-end, running on a Windows NT.-based server farm, has provided
> continuous availability with no single point of failure."
>
> - Yeah, I'm sure the front-end was as heavily loaded as the back-end.
> - If NT is so good, why didn't they have it running the back-end as well
> as the front-end?
> - "no single point of failure" just means they couldn't pin it down to
> just one fault.
Yep that's a real possibility. They did mention continuous availability.
They could ping it ?
WIndows NT / 2000 are quite reliable at the end of the day.
They don't just configure themselves though. It takes a lot of
work to make a Windows NT based system work properly.
I'm running several win2k advanced server boxes here
and they've been up and running for weeks now without
a reboot or a major problem. This is definitely progress
from Redmond's finest >:-))
>
> "Other major sites include Barnes & Noble, InfoSpace etc."
>
> - so what, we're running playboy.com, penthouse.com and dilbert.com. Which
> set here do you think gets more hits? :-)
>
SUN runs PLAYBOY. I will restrain from making any
vulgar comment about up-time. Whoops , too late.
Leaving all that aside I don't care if Microsoft engages
in this kind of scaremongering as most nix people
will tell you that Windows is crap and always will be.
Apple lovers will tell you that the Mac is wonderful
and I can say that having used them all they all have
their pros and cons. Their particular place in the technology
jungle. I often wished that I could have Windows devtools
on a machine with the stability of LINUX and the ease of
use of the MAC.
...shane
--
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Shane Dempsey - sdempsey at domain tssg.wit.ie
TSSG Researcher http://www-tssg.wit.ie
(0x2b || -(0x2b) == 0xff) ? printf("that is the question");
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