RE: OT - Shutting down an RS/6000 ?

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: Hans Boldt
>
> The old dream of software portability is now becoming a reality, thanks to
> the growth of open standards in general, and Linux in particular.

I'll just chime in one last time, as this is once again devolving from a
specific issue to one of zealotry.

Unix is great for stream file manipulation, that's what it was built for,
which is why in many ways it's so good for TCP/IP communications.  Thus
TCP/IP and the Internet was built upon Unix.  But if it wasn't for Windows,
we'd still be communicating via IRC.  Even Mosaic didn't cause the explosion
of the World Wide Web, it was Netscape and then IE that made the Internet
ubiquitous.

As to portable software, it had nothing to do with Unix.  It had to do with
Java, which was originally designed to control cable TV converters.  The
fact that Java merged so well with the Internet was one of those wonderful
accidents of progress that bring us things like nylon.  The two built each
other.  And neither would have the acceptance it does without Windows.

And Linux, well, that was one man's vision of bringing software to the
masses.  The fact that he built on Unix was nearly inevitable, since Unix
was the only operating system publicly available.

All these things aside, *nix variants have their place.  But in no way is
that place as a business logic server.  That is distinctly the domain of the
fast, agile database and HLLs designed to take advantage of them.  Perhaps
some day we'll have enough cycles and gigabytes to burn that we don't care
about performance; until then, the world revolves around the database and
how fast we can get data into and out of it, and OS/400 is the clear winner
there.

Joe