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Tragedy: Waiting for the laughter to start

By | August 28, 2010, 12:15am PDT

Summary: Usually I ignore idiotic comment but sometimes the idiocy is so apropos that the petty response is the right response - here because the writer is normally sane but produced a stunning indictment of his own position.

The strangest response to last week’s blog wasn’t Scotth’s contention that you can buy a zOS machine for $33K - you can, and for only another couple of hundred thousand you can license enough software to emulate a 9370 on it.

No, the hands down winner for tragi-comedy was this, from “civikminded”:

RE: Forces of nature
@Roger Ramjet

You can run Windoze through DumbRays.

Sure.. what do you need on the back end? VMWare ESX. Wait.. or VirtualBox (I’ll go on with this post when the laughter dies down)

All your ‘Autonomics’ can be achieved on Windows with Virtual Desktop Broker apps that have been available for 5-6 years. In fact with VMWare View, I can serve out thousands of desktops from a single OS image. No, not thousands of copies of a single OS image. 1 single OS image.

Here’s a person whose response to the proposition that DP and Wintel have effectively merged to perpetuate the worst of both as the new standard, is to argue that: “I can serve out thousands of desktops from a single OS image. No, not thousands of copies of a single OS image. 1 single OS image. ”

Notice the use of “I” in his claim? He can run thousands of virtual PCs from ONE OS image - provided the servers silently boot Unix to run Windows OSes as applications, the clients are PCs running Windows OSes, only some specially certified applications are allowed; and users? They get to put up and shut up.

I don’t think he could have done better had he intended to demonstrate that today’s Windows data centers tend to reproduce the worst features of IBM’s 1970s mainframe world - and had he wanted to show that the people defending this nonsense often understand neither their own technology nor anyone else’s; well, I doubt he could have improved on this either.

So what’s going on? As regular readers know I think Festinger made a lot of sense, and what he’d say in this situation is clear: the more arrogant and absurd responses like these get, the clearer it should be that the people involved know they’re wrong but are desperately hoping that enough shouting will, like the proverbial trillion monkeys typing out King Lear, eventually reveal something justifying what they’re doing to their users and employers.

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Topics

Operating System, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Software, Paul Murphy

Paul Murphy (a pseudonym) is an IT consultant specializing in Unix and related technologies.

Disclosure

Paul Murphy

I do not work for, or otherwise receive anything from, any of the companies I write about. I have some money in a number of funds that bet on the markets, including the technology market, but have no direct control over how these funds are administered or what investments are made. I use Sun and Apple technology both at home and at work.

Biography

Paul Murphy

Originally a Math/Physics graduate who couldn't cut it in his own field, Paul Murphy (a pseudonym) became an IT consultant specializing in Unix and related technologies after a stint working for a DARPA contractor programming in Fortran and APL. Since then he's worked in both systems management and consulting for a range of employers including KPMG, the government of Alberta, and his own firm. In those roles he's "been there and done that" for just about every aspect of systems management and operation.

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RE: Tragedy: Waiting for the laughter to start
rikkytikkytavi@... Updated - 3rd Sep 2010
@DevGuy_z

And this is a good example of deployment, but maybe Murphy was caring more for the effects on end users.
If I'm not wrong, your "system" builds tools to be used ex-post, whereas in Murphy's rant/depiction/analysis the problem is focused on how the two ends of deployments in the management of large infrastructural entities (in the way he sees and illustrates them in the last two blogs) affects each other.
Or, which one is the victim...
View in thread
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Classy
civikminded 28th Aug 2010
I know I'm right when you choose to not address my questions in the comments, but rather stand on your bully pulpit instead.

I'll ask my question again, that you chose to ignore.

So lets say I'm deploying a SunRay solution. What efficiencies will I gain by deploying a Solaris client OS infrastructure vs. another OS? Why will the Solaris solution yeild a lower TCO? You obviously don't have the answers.

When the rubber hits the road you have nothing but 'Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing' as TonyMCS puts it.

At least Rodger makes a weak attempt to justify such a solution with vague talk around 'autonomics.'
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Next week
murph_z 28th Aug 2010
The issue over the last few weeks has not been about Solaris or TCO - it has been about the evolution of DP vs Science based computing and the co-option (!) of wintel on the DP side.

In none of those blog entries do I push Solaris or mention TCO.

However, Solaris is the leading Unix and the Sun Ray is the best currently available smart display for corporate use, so next week I'll compare a few of the costs of meeting user needs using science based tools to the cost of doing it your way.
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RE: Tragedy: Waiting for the laughter to start
civikminded Updated - 28th Aug 2010
@murph_z

Murph, you accuse me of "not knowing my technology, or anyone else's" Wow, pot... let me introduce you to black kettle.

...provided the servers silently boot Unix to run Windows OSes as applications, the clients are PCs running Windows OSes

ESX and more dramatically, ESXi are bare metal OSs that use a Linux kernel to interface with the hypervisor layer. So we'll say you are half right when you contend they 'boot UNIX'

to run Windows OSes as applications

Windows sure, or Linux, or Solaris. Whatever. We'll give you 33% on that one.

only some specially certified applications are allowed

Now this is just totally wrong. Unless an app depends on specific hardware 99 times out of 100, it'll virtualize fine.

the clients are PCs running Windows OSes

bzzzt. Wrong again. You CAN do this if you like. Or you can use terminals by Wyse or even GASP - SUNRAYS! Or you can use a open sourced client app to access from Linux, Windows, MacOSX. http://code.google.com/p/vmware-view-open-client/ . We'll give you 10% on that one.

and users? They get to put up and shut up.

I dunno.. users might like to work on their virtual desktop on a SunRay at work, then go home and be able to access the same desktop through an SSL tunnel using their home PC. I'll bet this fulfills the needs of most users who would ordinarily be issued a laptop.

Meanwhile, you don't even seem to realize that Oracle's OWN SOLUTION for virtual desktops uses HyperV or ESX or Virtual Box as its backend.
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RE: Tragedy: Waiting for the laughter to start
scotth_z 28th Aug 2010
@murph_z
We aren't talking about Science based computing... we are talking business based computing. BIG difference... Just as companies didn't want to put any money in developing apps on mainframes in the 90s... because of higher costs... companies don't want to put any money in developing apps on Ultrasparc because of higher costs. Solaris on Ultrasparcs have become legacy systems. Until they(SUN, now Oracle) address the cost factor, their market share will continue to dwindle, no matter what fancy new features are added to Solaris... no matter what happens to Sparc/Sun Ray. This is no longer the 90s... Solaris/Ultrasparc is no longer the low cost option, anymore.
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RE: Tragedy: Waiting for the laughter to start
rikkytikkytavi@... Updated - 30th Aug 2010
@murph_z

Hallo, I do remember - time ago - that you were counting on the arrival of new UltraSparc SMT processors, when the Sun could still cast some shadows on other technologies.
This is no more, and ZFS is the last jewel on Ellison's crown if I am not wrong.

Reading the Phoronix benchmarks - made on desktop machines, of course - I see ZFS does not offer a superior performance today, as compared to EXT4 or some Brtfs configs.
Let me repeat: benchmarking desktop configurations on desktops PCs. There is no mention of enterprise/corporate deployments and the tests are nowhere intended for such a market

How do you see the future and the resilience of the ZFS technology in more modest computing needs?

And, seeing the demise of OpenSolaris (which made a very good HTPC thing from the point of view of CPU utilization, anyway) do you think the FreeBSD and NetBSD ports of ZFS will be able to cater for its advantages?

Cheers
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So have you learned your lesson?
NonZealot 28th Aug 2010
@civikminded
I can tell a Murphy article right from the home page:
Usually I ignore idiotic comment but sometimes the idiocy is so apropos that the petty response is the right response

I knew the instant that I saw it that this was Murphy. While I don't agree with what many of the bloggers here write, only Murphy has this deep seated anger at anyone who doesn't think exactly like him. That anger and spitefulness always comes out in the first 2 sentences which is why Murphy blogs are easy to spot from the home page.

So have you learned your lesson? It is best not to engage people as infantile as Murphy in logical conversation. You won't win because, as you correctly pointed out, he has the bully pulpit. The good news is that no one here takes him seriously so even though you lose to Murphy, remember, you are only losing to him on a rarely read blog. My suggestion: shake your head at the weekly train wreck he spews from his keyboard and move on. It isn't worth it.

To ZDNet: Murphy and his blog represent you. Are you sure that CBS appreciates it when you belittle CBS consumers and use words like "idiotic" to describe your readership? Please think about whether or not Murphy is the type of person you would want representing you.
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That line is from MacBeth...
BubbaJones_ 28th Aug 2010
@civikminded
Well, I will admit this subject between you and Paul Murphy is way over my heard. If I were playing baseball my position would be "Left Out".

Anyway, if you must attribute that phase to TonyMCS do so however, he took it from Shakespeare's MacBeth, Act 5 Scene 5:
...The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing...

For what is is worth, nothing, thought I would throw that in.
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RE: Tragedy: Waiting for the laughter to start
tonymcs@... 28th Aug 2010
@civikminded

Let's attribute that to Shakespeare with the tragedy being Macbeth. The full quote begins "A tale told by an idiot", but I've never thought Rudy was an idiot, just sadly misguided wink
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RE: Tragedy: Waiting for the laughter to start
civikminded 29th Aug 2010
@tonymcs@...

Yes I know that its Shakespeare. I was attributing it to you in this context. I didn't think you came up with it.
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RE: Tragedy: Waiting for the laughter to start
rikkytikkytavi@... Updated - 30th Aug 2010
@civikminded

Ok. it's raining and I have nothing to do, let me try this game in the hypothetical world of "The Good Things".

I imagine that:

IF you manage to standardize all word processing operation on ODF with a good Word/Excell/Access driver

IF you manage to find and acceptable UI to be used by all employees WITHOUT pointing a gun at their neck

IF you slap Opera/Chromium/Firefox onto their monitors when they push the botton

... MAYBE a big Solaris 10 machine in the basement with each mission-critical applications running from a container (from within a Zone) is better/cheaper/safer than the VMWare alternative.

Please you expert(s) contend with actual examples or other kind of resources, which would mean "they did this with that and saved xxx bucks".

Regards

PS And, please, but really PLEASE, find some donors to pay for developers to fix the SILO bugs on UltraSparc!!!
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RE: Tragedy: Waiting for the laughter to start
rikkytikkytavi@... Updated - 30th Aug 2010
@civikminded

Ok. it's raining and I have nothing to do, let me try this game in the hypothetical world of "The Good Things".

I imagine that:

IF you manage to standardize all word processing operation on ODF with a good Word/Excell/Access driver

IF you manage to find and acceptable UI to be used by all employees WITHOUT pointing a gun at their neck

IF you slap Opera/Chromium/Firefox onto their monitors when they push the botton

... MAYBE a big Solaris 10 machine in the basement with each mission-critical applications running from a container (from within a Zone) is better/cheaper/safer than the VMWare alternative.

Please you experts contend with actual examples or other kind of resources, which would mean "they did this with that and saved xxx bucks".

Regards

And, please, but really PLEASE, find some donors to pay for developers to fix the SILO bugs on UltraSparc!!!
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I am going to cut off my RSS feed
anra 28th Aug 2010
I had reasonably good amount of "respect" for ZDnet so I subscribed to the blog feed. Right from the day 1, I found quality of the blogs utterly disappointing, but this one is the final straw. So now bloggers are getting paid for blogging...oh wait a minute...no,they are getting paid for vicious attack on their readers. It's really very mature to single out a reader and try to "publicly shame" him/her..
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RE: Tragedy: Waiting for the laughter to start
civikminded 28th Aug 2010
@anra

I appreciate the support but I'm a big boy. And to be fair I've been trying to publicly shame Murph for years, so I'll wear this like a badge of honor wink
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RE: Tragedy: Waiting for the laughter to start
tonymcs@... Updated - 29th Aug 2010
@civikminded

Gee he mentioned me once too!!!!!

You have to realise that Rudy (Murph) lives in a museum without Windows. This blog is his only method of communication to the outside. In fact, many have suggested he's so isolated that it may as well be a parallel universe.

Out in the real world his hated Object Oriented Programming has become default, his hardware vendors are disappearing and his favourite 20C OS has been showing its age for some years now.

Cognitive dissonance is killing him. On the one hand he KNOWS that *nix is perfect, Sun is the only solution and a survival shelter is required. BUT the real world shows that their is only one global OS, no-one is interested in his quaint hardware and the sky didn't fall in when Obama got elected (although why a Canadian cares, I have no idea).

As a consultant evangelist, Rudy is bringing the good word to all that computing reached its peak in the 1990s and any attempt to improve is doomed to failure. I've asked him time and time again to give us a real example of him saving a company from Windows, but to no avail.

Perhaps some of Rudy's greatful clients could come forward and tell us how their back to the future ride went.
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sorrow sweet sweet sorrow;
sparkle farkle 28th Aug 2010
how it begs for laughter, for mirth, for the imitable spirit that could make it not so. But alas the folly of the wise, and the ignorance of the stupid conspire to wrest the joy of life from the very bosom that spawned it, and in doing so make us all so much less than we are......
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RE: Tragedy: Waiting for the laughter to start
scotth_z 28th Aug 2010
Murphy...
It's not the 90s anymore... Sun is no longer the leading hardware vendor... They are a distant 4th now... Solaris is no longer the leading selling UNIX... not even counting Linux, the rising OS.
You can't even get the computing model of mainframes right. Here is a hint... IBM introduced two silos of pricing with the z-series back in 2000, your understanding of mainframe pricing is from the 80s/90s. Even in the 90s mainframes were scalable in costs, just at a higher pricing model compared to UNIX systems, which is why the mainframe market share shrunk dramatically.

But it is now the 21st century, IBM z-series now have two independent pricing stacks, each with their own separate hardware pricing... their own separate licensing... Both stacks are independently scalable... both in capabilities and PRICING...
What you and Sun management didn't figure out over the last decade is that you are NO LONGER competing against the higher price stack of z/os, General Purpose engines and the software pricing stack associated with GP engines... but you are competing against Linux on z, the speciality engines and the well priced licensing cost associated with Linux.
With several advantages on top of that...
no additional hardware contracts.. for existing mainframe customers..
no additional electrician costs for existing mainframe customers...
and far faster intranet connections and fully scalable with virtual switch technology...(another thing the SUN people didn't figure out)
and being able to run hundreds of images via virtualization, all sharing the same software licensing.

It appears to me that your failure to even understand what Solaris/Sparc is NOW competing against... is why you have such false understanding of the computing industry... While x86 systems have been chewing up Sparc equipment on the low end because of price... you/they didn't understand what they were even competing against at the high end either. This ignorance is why Sun went from 33% of the hardware revenue share in 1999.. to 8% today... Without understanding what Oracle is now facing, they have no chance of rebounding this.

Do you honestly think it is a 'marketing' issue.... that drove Sun out... The CIO/IT director types... aren't stupid... they can see and extrapolate costs far better than you can or ever could for each of their individual shops. They flocked to Linux on z.. while abandoning Sun.

What do you think Murph... did the thousands who jumped on linux on z all take stupid pills or are you the one who can't figure the cost factor that is happening here? Just remember that the CIO/IT director types who are flocking are pretty much the same sort of people who jumped on the Sun bandwagon in the 90s.

Just remember that IBM introduced a new GENERATION(not just a new model) of mainframes... Solaris/Ultrasparcs will very soon be competing against x86 blades as part of the new mainframe.
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The laughter has started.
Mister Spock 29th Aug 2010
The tragedy is that Mr. Murphy has not realized that the laughter is directed at him, not with him.

plain
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Trapped in a museum
tonymcs@... Updated - 29th Aug 2010
Duplicate post.

Time for ZDNet to upgrade to Windows and get some decent posting software.
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I'm with you there, see all that whitespace on the right?
sparkle farkle 30th Aug 2010
this new format is .....new but not that nice.

@tonymcs@...
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You guys all suk
Roger Ramjet 30th Aug 2010
Instead of offering intellectual inspiration or showing some debating skill - you resort to name calling and grandstanding. It's not easy posting your thoughts for all to read - and comment on. If you wanted to, you could write a nice article and Murph would even volunteer to post it here - I know, I've done it a few times now. He can be very accommodating to ideas that challenge his own. Like a good debater, he attacks the other people's IDEAS and not their character.

I see these last few blog entries as Murph trying to educate us to 2 schools of thought on IT and their origins. Anyone with the attitude that "history is boring" will of course, not be very much interested in what Murph has to say. But I find it very interesting as I hadn't thought about it until Murph brought it up. I tend to agree with his reasoning as I grew up witnessing some of these trends (BSD Unix a case in point).

I suppose that younger readers might not have enough of the background story to fully understand where Murph is coming from. What I don't understand is the older readers here are acting quite juvenile. I wonder what they teach their kids about name calling - "That kid looks fat - go over there son and berate him!". If you have a different opinion than Murph, by all means post it. If you just want to vent on Murph - do it verbally.
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RE: Tragedy: Waiting for the laughter to start
rikkytikkytavi@... Updated - 30th Aug 2010
@Roger Ramjet

Thank you for that example about Ford/GM in Murphy's previous installment, but it makes for a metric I cannot understand by size, experience, technology.

Instead, let me point out what I see here in the Netherlands.
Given my inability to put my acts together AND behave during a job interview, my bread and butter comes from cleaning the floors of big governmental or firms buildings; I see nothing but Microsoft around, of course, usually full fledged desktop in, say, accounting firms, and terminal services in SOHO and governmental offices.
In the latter case they still have a core2duo Dell or HP thing under the desk, but I assume them loading from networking resources (that happens at the premises level, and in a couple of early working desks), although still with a hard-disk (blink blink blink...).

Smaller deployment, like job agencies offices, sport Wyse or otherwise branded boxes. That's smarter, no?

Accounting firms heavily rely on the MS Office mantra (that was all what I could peek at, never seen anything else than Access or Excell) maybe governmental desks use some other kind of software to talk to other big etc etc as Utrecht's Province, Regio, you name it.
But it's a WinXP Pro world at NZA here in Utrecht, and nothing else - well, their CMS machine is based on Morello on Windows 2000.

Please, oh expert(s) oh, condescend with my Free Software addiction and tell to the wind...

Considering the fact that they live, breath and eat like Office and WinXP, and they pay volume license with all Microsoft maverickies included, how can you make a big big big deployment like this:

http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://www.nza.nl

save money and resources (beside skipping IIS) in the way Murphy points at?

Regards
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No answers no Science
rikkytikkytavi@... 31st Aug 2010
Is that a constant? That when a practical example for dummies is requested, then the knowledge is withheld...
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Your ZFS question
murph_z Updated - 31st Aug 2010
Far above.. is interesting.

I know Sun people who haven't a clue about using ZFS so poor performance data from people who have never used it should come as no surprise - but I suspect that the general issue is that ZFS does a lot more than the typical file system app does and there's a cycles cost to doing that.

This is one of the (many) things Sun's sales people never got their heads around and so never really tried to sell - beleive it or not, I saw a Sun proposal last year that offered third party file encryption on a Solaris
system.

Overall, there's a blog topic here.. and I'll get to it when I can.
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Topics to come
rikkytikkytavi@... Updated - 31st Aug 2010
Thanks for the interest, and I look forward to read of a new installment about ZFS.
Now I am waking up the roster and starting the dawn before going to clean other floors, but I am still curious to know if there are some answers for the other questions.

Good breakfast

PS I did use ZFS for the sake of it, for fun, for geekery, you name it... Even as a root volume on Solaris10 and FreeBSD 8.0 and 8.1 - thanks a lot to the many good people who wrote tutorials for dummies!
Beside the setup and the performance blablabla, the only thing I can say is that it gave me the impression of comfort.
That is, a comfortable filesystem
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I'm confused by your response.
DevGuy_z 2nd Sep 2010
@murph sometimes too much satire muddies the waters. Maybe I'm too dumb but I didn't comprehend your concern.

Here's my take on virtualization and how we've used it. We have a very large build. The build builds many tools and components developed at multiple sites and by many different departments. There are dependencies on this build. The build takes about 4 hours due to many many millions of lines of C++, Delphi, VB6, C#, C, perl and perhaps a few others - plus time to check these files out of MKS. Because we have to a variety of products that branch off the main trunk it makes it easier if various groups can build their stuff in parallel. Our build machines are VMs and it can save a few days to provision a build server (there are many tools that need to be installed) by simply copying the VM file. BTW, the build has been run native (no VM) and as a VM. There is very little difference in the build time. Vmware estimates 3% overhead. Practically we can't tell the difference 3% is below the noise level of network traffic differences etc.

We are also planning on using VMs for our test farms. This way we can revert a system back to a known state following a test.
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RE: Tragedy: Waiting for the laughter to start
rikkytikkytavi@... Updated - 3rd Sep 2010
@DevGuy_z

And this is a good example of deployment, but maybe Murphy was caring more for the effects on end users.
If I'm not wrong, your "system" builds tools to be used ex-post, whereas in Murphy's rant/depiction/analysis the problem is focused on how the two ends of deployments in the management of large infrastructural entities (in the way he sees and illustrates them in the last two blogs) affects each other.
Or, which one is the victim...

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