Mach from mt Xinu

[Chip Rosenthal]

>From what I understand of your announcement, the services you are
>providing for the purchase fee are:
>
>  1) Paying royalties to ATT,
>  2) Repackaging working CMU software,
>  3) Duplicating it onto floppies and tapes,
>  4) and (although not stated, but I would assume) duplicating the
>documentation. 

<flame_on>

No...you don't understand jack shit.

Mt. Xinu has been around for a looong time.  Back when all you dudes
and dudettes were doing reeely kool stuff like writing BASIC programs
for your peecee, Mt. Xinu was shipping the UNIX of choice (BSD4.x)
for the hardware system of choice (VAXen).  Originally they were the
only game in town.  Even once DEC grudgingly started shipping an
Ultrix, many folks still preferred to run Mt. Xinu's stuff.  Funny
thing that so many people like Mt. Xinu's BSD.  All they do is pay
royalties to AT&T, repackage the BSD software, and duplicate the
documentation.

It is quite ironic that the people who are flaming Mt. Xinu don't want
Mach/386 anyway - they are just too ignorant to realize it.  If they
extricated their heads from their anal cavities, they would realize
that Mach/386 is not going to run their Lotus and WordPerfect gunk.
In fact, if you don't already know that you want Mach/386 - take my
word for it, you probably don't.

Well...Mt. Xinu is now bringing what they have done so well in the
past on big iron down to the little boxes.  Sure, Mach/386 is pricey.
But there is only a select group of folks out there who is going to
want it.  And to those who want it, it will be a great boon.  This is
what's called, boyz and girlz, a `niche market'.  Things in a niche
market are more expensive.  Ever wondered why a 4-port serial card is
more than 2x the cost of a 2-port serial card?  That's niche marketing.
(There, maybe that's something you peecee heads can understand.)

I don't run Mach/386.  And I probably won't.  I understand what it
is, and it doesn't fit in with my expected needs.  But that's ok.  I
played with it a bit at Uniforum, and it seems slick.  I don't think
I've ever seen anything fork() as fast as this sucker does.

Unix has been around a long time.  So has Mt. Xinu.  When Mt. Xinu
announces a product, it would be in your best interests to shut your
yap and take a good hard look.  I do.  These folks have some of the
best UNIX systems programmers in the world - even in these days when
anybody who bought a peecee thru Computer Shopper calls themselves a
UNIX expert.  Maybe some of you net.newbies should get a little
perspective.  Go get the book by Libes and Ressler.  That way you can
at least pretend you know something about UNIX without making a total
arse of yourself.

<flame_off>

I'm not kowtowing to vendors here, but the incessant vendor bashing
is really hurting this group.  Lord knows, I've lobbed my own gernades
at ISC support and SCO security in the past few weeks.  All I can say
is I try to pick my targets carefully.  I wouldn't pretend to have
any great influence upon the world, but the fact that SCO has recently
released an SLF to address security and Marty at ISC appears to be
driving support into gear at least tells me I haven't been too far
off the mark.  So, I'm not going to pretend that this is a tea party
and we should all be polite and keep our elbows off the table, but
flaming a vendor you don't know over a product you've never seen is
just downright silly.

The problem is, after a while people begin to realize that it's probably
smarter to move out of the target area than continue to have bombs
dropped upon your head.  It's nice to have a channel to vent our
collective spleens.  In the long run, it would be a lot better if
folks would hang around here and not fear for their heads every time
they come up for air.

-- 
Chip Rosenthal  512-482-8260  |
Unicom Systems Development    |    I saw Elvis in my wtmp file.
<chip at chinacat.Unicom.COM>    |