Conference 7.286::digital

    Actually, I was surfing for Jay Leno, with musical guest Robert
    Palmer...
    

	If possible could someone enter the text of the interview or give a pointer to it.

	thanx

	jb

    I caught part of it when I was flipping the channels... Did anybody
    notice anything odd about Bob when he was talking???
    
    tn

	Did he have a hair or two out of place?

    Actually, he was blinking very much. Must have been tired eyes from the
    time change and the contact lens.

    I've watched part of it ( around 7:25 pm EST).  His manners is good. 
    The content he talked about mostly can be seen in his DVN speeches such as
    Digital's (or his) vision on Internet, 64-bit technology, commitment to
    NT and UNIX... I did not hear anything about OpenVMS.  He also
    emphasized our "Strategic" alliance with Microsoft.  When he was asked
    about downsizing, he paused for a few microseconds and then said 95%
    has been done ( If I remember correctly) he also added that we are
    hiring people aggressively.  I am glad that when he was asked about
    the poor performance of our stock, he did not use any excuses but
    saying our performance will bring it up.  
    
    I have to admit that I am not able to perform the same level as he did 
    in front of the national TV audience.  However, maybe my expectation is 
    unfairly too high or maybe he did but I've missed, I do expect for 
    a person in his position and in such a rare opportunity he should've 
    mentioned our talented engineering resources as well as other leading-edge 
    technology (e.g. Clustering, Firewalls,...ect) and ... emhemmm... OpenVMS.  
    In addition, he should address our commitment to improve customer service 
    to meet better satisfaction which is (IMHO) the main factor that our 
    customer left us for other vendors.  

    I think blinking very much is putting it kindly....  It looked like a
    short circuit, it was actually distracting while watching him. You know 
    what they say about someone who blinks alot while they talk.....
    
    tn

    
    When the president of the company has a national television
    audience and chooses not to mention OpenVMS, I think that's
    a pretty clear message about its future.

    Tom

    When someone blinks alot it usually (IMHO) means
    they are very nervous.  A good example of that is
    when a newcaster's whose first night on the news
    (Lester Strong comes to mind), they blink a lot.
    They are scared and nervous.  At least he kept his
    voice from shaking, right?

Blinking your eyes could also mean that you are nervous. Being nervous can
also make you forget to say important things. Don't read too much into no
mention about OpenVMS.

>Per

    If OVMS wasn't continually being treated as the redhaired baby, one
    lack of mention wouldn't be so bad.  But OVMS has been consistantly
    forgotten, added in as an afterthought, or oopsed when it is pointed
    out in press and employee information releases.  
    
    meg

    
    Amen.  Bright lights, nerves, blinking eyes.  It doesn't have to have
    some sinister meaning, like he's lying.  If Bob's primary job were to
    read the news on TV, or run for public office, I'd recommend he work
    on the problem (it didn't help Bob "Blinky" Dole).  
    
    It's like the people who give him shit about his Porche.  Heck, if *I*
    made over a million a year, *I'd* own one, and try and keep it clean
    and scratch free.
    
    Demonizing Bob won't make things better, or be an appropriate way to
    lay blame (like the 3 envelopes).  The stock performance, revenue
    decline, profit decline, employee population decline (both forced and
    attrition), repetetive restructuring, and perceived lack of leadership
    (real or imagined) are better things to focus on, in terms of praising
    or knocking  Mr. Palmer.
    
    As to the non-mention of OpenVMS... the focus of the interview was
    Millicent, and by extension the Internet, and he was asked directly
    about the PC business which had been highlighted by it's visible
    decline.  When OpenVMS becomes more than a footnote in the strategy,
    then I would expect some mention of it.  Or when Galaxies gets it's 15
    minutes of fame.
    
    

>    As to the non-mention of OpenVMS... the focus of the interview was
>    Millicent, and by extension the Internet, and he was asked directly
>    about the PC business which had been highlighted by it's visible
>    decline.   

    He also said the server market is the most important for Digital.

>    When OpenVMS becomes more than a footnote in the strategy,
>    then I would expect some mention of it. 

    Exactly the point; the message is being put out clearly and
    consistently.  The future is internet & Windows NT, and 64-bit Unix.

    The argument can be made that Affinity = Windows NT and that therefore
    OpenVMS actually does fit in with and support our NT strategy.  I guess
    the question is whether Affinity is a long term solution or a stop gap
    measure.

    Tom

    
    re: .14  exactly.  I'm not arguing the merits of the direction, only
    that Bob was entirely consistant with the message.  I do not believe
    that there has been any acknoledgement that OpenVMS is anything except
    a footnote in the strategy, or that Affinity is more than a way to hold
    the VMS customer base.
    
    You can argue that OpenVMS + Affinity is a better strategy than 1-3-9,
    but it clearly isn't more than a footnote in it as it stands.
    

>>> PALMER: This is a new technology that enables
>>> micro-transactions over the internet -- commercial
>>> transactions that heretofore haven't been possible
>>> to execute. It's a technology that would make it
>>> possible, for example, for a person to buy a
>>> single recipe rather than an entire cookbook and
>>> pay for it in very small amounts.

Recipes?!?!  Oh! Sure!  Wink, Wink, know what I mean!  I've noticed a hugh 
growth in internet sites devoted to exchanging "recipes".


							-Paul

>  Or when Galaxies gets it's 15 minutes of fame.

What is Galaxies?

    

    |What is Galaxies?
    
    a large assemblage of stars, nebulae, and interstellar gas and dust.

    Last night on NPR's "marketplace" they had a whole story on
    Millicent, including an interview with Bob Supnik.  Very well
    done, in my opinion.  For once it showed Digital as a company
    *anticipating* a major change in the way people use computers,
    rather than playing catch-up.
    

    Re: .17
    
    Galaxies - sometimes refered to as "Cluster in a box".  It will allow
               configuring such as a 32 CPU Alphaserver as an 8 node
    	       OpenVMS Cluster with 4 cpu's in each "node".
    
    

    
    Actually, there is a computerworld article floating around that
    contains a mix of accurate and inaccurate information.
    
    Galaxies is a software architecture that will allow efficient use of
    large memories, and many CPUs... the next step beyond Clusters, and
    around SMP scaling issues.
    
    

    	Likely the interview was in concert with the introduction of
    Millicent at Internet World, intended to be nothing more.  When you
    have 5 minutes *only* to get your message across and no more you deal
    with what you have to and get this message across. BP is more than a good
    presenter, the visibility doesn't hurt.
    
    	<moderate flame> I wish that more than a few could see past all
    those trees and realize what's up in the forest.. <flames die off
    naturally>
    
    	IMHO...

re 20, 21

Are you sure that this is NOT NUMA? Look at Sequent's homepage.

Cheers,
Henny

ps: are we late again?

NUMA is a hardware technique for working around the problems that arise
when you try to provide symmetric access from dozens of processors to the
same memory system.  It provides Non-Uniform (performance of) Memory Access,
with accesses to nearby memory completing faster than access to remote memory.

Galaxies is a software strategy for taking advantage of dozens of processors
sharing a common memory.  While some of the conditions sound the same, there's
no requirement that one be used with the other.  Of course, you could use
Galaxies on NUMA hardware, in which case you would want each separate cluster
node to deal mainly with the memory that is near it in the hardware
organization...

    
    
    re .3
    
    >I caught part of it when I was flipping the channels... Did anybody
    >notice anything odd about Bob when he was talking???
    
    
    What? His lips were moving but Bill Gates voice was coming out???