[rescue] [geeks] Last Call - Ultra 5/10 parts

[microcode at zoho.com]

On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 08:42:35AM -0400, Carl R. Friend wrote:

>    I'd not call it "conceit" (unless the OP meant "concept") at all;

I didn't even see that until I read your post. I guess dyslexic am as I the
guy next, all after! ;-)

>    The Oracle deal was a didaster for the hobbyist scene, and also
> for Sun/Solaris itself as lots of companies simply started jettissioning
> Sun gear due to the exhorbitant contract costs that Oracle wants to
> extort from users.

Yeah, but the one good thing that came out of it is Sun SPARC boxes are now
cheap. Not to ship, though! I'd use mine more if Solaris Studio would get
some developer love.

> the second would be, "There are still a lot of those systems running
> in the wild, perhaps passionately kept alive by historians, perhaps
> not -- but, they *are* out there, and when the Intel monoculture gets
> bricked by an enemy, the SPARCs, the POWER-based machines, MIPS gear,
> and other non-Intel, non-Linux, and non-Widows stuff will still run

                                      ^^^^^^^^^^

That was even better than "conceit!"  Classic!


> very happily, thank-you-very-much."

Yes. It's really hard to go 5 minutes without hearing somebody say how great
Linux is because it runs on some new hardware victim platform. Please. This
mailing list is worth it just to escape that for a few minutes a day. And I
always enjoy your posts, Carl. And Mouse. And almost all you guys. Thanks
for the brain relief!

> >[...]  But, sometimes, I feel as though I should just walk
> >out on the ice floe; the world no longer wants people like me.
> 
>    That'd be a bit rash.  Sure, we're increasingly occupying an
> environmental niche, and there are fewer of us every year, but I
> think it's important to keep the flame alive and to not blindly
> follow the lemmings.

Don't just not follow them blindly, don't feed the lemmings!

-- 
I was a programmer in the 1970s and I still am.
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