INFO-VAX Tue, 08 Apr 2008 Volume 2008 : Issue 196 Contents: Re: Does POWER_OFF really work ? Re: Immediate:TOLAS Programmer in McHenry, IL - DIRECT CLIENT Requirement Requir Re: Immediate:TOLAS Programmer in McHenry, IL - DIRECT CLIENT Requirement Re: Immediate:TOLAS Programmer in McHenry, IL - DIRECT CLIENT Requirement Re: Immediate:TOLAS Programmer in McHenry, IL - DIRECT CLIENT Requirement Requir Re: New contact details for Guy Peleg Re: OpenVMS Integrity + Blades Testimonials - Financial and Telecom Markets Re: OpenVMS Integrity + Blades Testimonials - Financial and Telecom Markets Mark Re: OT: RIP Arthur C. Clarke Php invented by a former DECcie ? Re: Php invented by a former DECcie ? Re: Php invented by a former DECcie ? Re: Php invented by a former DECcie ? Re: Php invented by a former DECcie ? Re: Php invented by a former DECcie ? Re: Php invented by a former DECcie ? Re: System Programming Resources for Alpha Architecture Re: System Programming Resources for Alpha Architecture Re: yet another compress question ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 06 Apr 2008 00:04:30 GMT From: VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG Subject: Re: Does POWER_OFF really work ? Message-ID: <47f8138d$0$5624$607ed4bc@cv.net> In article <3abe5a74-b36b-412d-b715-866358e6152c@m71g2000hse.googlegroups.com>, AEF writes: >On Apr 1, 9:42 am, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote: >> In article , AEF writes: >> >> >> >> >On Apr 1, 7:53 am, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote: >[...] >> >> Gas turbines aren't enormously efficient! 60% at most. A 7% dip in the >> >> grid for an hour didn't affect anything significantly! >> >> >> -- >> >> VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)COM >> >> >Seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_enginefor typical heat-engine >> >efficiencies. >> >> Then why didn't you consult wiki's gas turbine efficiency reference? > >This question is too vague to answer. > >> >> >Remember the 3 laws of thermodynamics: >> >> >1. You can't win. >> >> >2. You can't even break even. >> >> >3. You gotta play the game. >> >> Wow. I'm going to have to toss my Sears and Salinger "Thermodynamics, >> Kinetic Theory, and Statistical Thermodynamics" in the fire as they've >> mislead me on these laws. >> >> dU=dQ-dw ... hogwash! >> >> dS=dQ/T .... doggerel! >> >> lim S=0 .... utter bullshit! >> T->0 > >Do you get it or not? Here it looks like you don't. Do you have any powers of comprehension whatsoever? >> If I should cross paths with Dr. Smith, I'll personally thank him for >> wasting several hours a week for two semesters which would have been >> better spent in the pub contemplating the adiabatic boundary keeping >> heat flow (q) from my favorite beverages. :) > >Here it looks like you do. Thermodynamics is a waste of time. Got it! -- VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)COM "Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?" http://tmesis.com/drat.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 18:30:29 -0700 (PDT) From: yyyc186 Subject: Re: Immediate:TOLAS Programmer in McHenry, IL - DIRECT CLIENT Requirement Requir Message-ID: On Apr 6, 8:36 pm, David J Dachtera wrote: > > Actually, based on my experiences with trying "crack" another TOLAS > site, I'm failry sure that the issue their insistance on TOLAS > experience. > > From what I gather, TOLAS is a VAX/DEC BASIC application that is at > least somewhat modularized, similar to DAI's offering(s) in the DIBOL > world. > > Anyone with a modicum of API experience should be able to handle it. As > long they insist on TOLAS experience, their field of potential > candidates will remain very limited. > Being one who is working on TOLAS now and has worked on Perspective (500-800), MCBA, and Cyborg I would have to say insistence on package experience is the only way they are going to get anything done in a humane amount of time. I have never encountered a site which had a "canned" version of any of this. There was always a lot of custom mods which required someone to be very familiar with the home grown function library each package had to have any hope of avoiding the land mines. It would take a minimum of 8 months for a seasoned DEC BASIC programmer to come up to speed in such an environment. > Perhaps if it stays open for a another year or so, that will be long > enough for someone to gain some credible experience and land the > position, even if it only pays minimum wage. The billing rate being offered is less than half of what DEC BASIC coders are getting these days. If someone did bother to bone up, they wouldn't bother applying for the contract. For the record, another two phone calls and 9 emails on this contract today. I'm only counting the phone calls which actually managed to get through to me on a cell phone, not the ones that left messages at my office. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2008 01:06:45 GMT From: John Santos Subject: Re: Immediate:TOLAS Programmer in McHenry, IL - DIRECT CLIENT Requirement Message-ID: David J Dachtera wrote: > yyyc186 wrote: > >>When is EDS going to smell the coffee?? They have been opening this >>up to a cattle call since November 2007 and offering illegal alien >>wages the entire time. They still haven't filled it. >> >>Here's a hint. >> >>When they triple the billing rate they are offering, they will "start" >>to get people interested. It won't get interesting for anyone with >>TOLAS skills until they quadruple it. > > > Actually, based on my experiences with trying "crack" another TOLAS > site, I'm failry sure that the issue their insistance on TOLAS > experience. > > From what I gather, TOLAS is a VAX/DEC BASIC application that is at > least somewhat modularized, similar to DAI's offering(s) in the DIBOL > world. > > Anyone with a modicum of API experience should be able to handle it. As > long they insist on TOLAS experience, their field of potential > candidates will remain very limited. > > Thus, if the compensation offering is not up to snuff, it is likely to > remain vacant for rather a good while longer. > > Perhaps if it stays open for a another year or so, that will be long > enough for someone to gain some credible experience and land the > position, even if it only pays minimum wage. > > David J Dachtera > (formerly dba) DJE Systems Is Dave Froble out there anywhere? -- John Santos Evans Griffiths & Hart, Inc. 781-861-0670 ext 539 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 02:49:48 +0000 (UTC) From: moroney@world.std.spaamtrap.com (Michael Moroney) Subject: Re: Immediate:TOLAS Programmer in McHenry, IL - DIRECT CLIENT Requirement Message-ID: yyyc186 writes: >The billing rate being offered is less than half of what DEC BASIC >coders are getting these days. If someone did bother to bone up, they >wouldn't bother applying for the contract. Just for laughs, what rates are those fools offering? ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:37:29 -0500 From: David J Dachtera Subject: Re: Immediate:TOLAS Programmer in McHenry, IL - DIRECT CLIENT Requirement Requir Message-ID: <47FADA69.6394B719@spam.comcast.net> yyyc186 wrote: > [snip] > Being one who is working on TOLAS now and has worked on Perspective > (500-800), MCBA, and Cyborg I would have to say insistence on package > experience is the only way they are going to get anything done in a > humane amount of time. I have never encountered a site which had a > "canned" version of any of this. There was always a lot of custom > mods which required someone to be very familiar with the home grown > function library each package had to have any hope of avoiding the > land mines. It would take a minimum of 8 months for a seasoned DEC > BASIC programmer to come up to speed in such an environment. Hhmmm... Speaks rather badly of the calibre of BASIC programmers you're accustommed to, I guess. Dunno... Guess I came over on a different boat. "Perspective" - wasn't that the (il)LIOCS BASIC-plus package that got carried forward onto Basic Plus-2? If so, a colleague and I worked on that, also. The API itself was a major disaster. We tried to fix/extend it - which only exposed more holes in their code. I had somewhat better luck with an MCBA descendent which can be blamed on an outfit which called itself "The EDP Company", later "TEC". Had to take the client's code from UNIX BACK to VAX/VMS, including writing a substitute for a routine that existed in the UNIX DIBOL emulator (semi-interpretive pseudo-code executor called SIBOL) but not in TEC's standard-issue API. Called "TROUT" for "Terminal ROUTine", it provided cursor positioning and display attributes (bold, etc.) was which then not part of the DIBOL language. I moved them from a no-name UN*X box to a MicroVAX-II-Q5 with an RA81. Ran short of disk space, and the only way I could get some disk space back was to change from static to dynamic linking: built their .OLBs up into Shareable Library Images (SLIs), then recompiled and linked against those. Cost me some run-time performance, but got back a little under a third of an RA81, as I recall. All in all, cheaper and easier than trying to get a disk upgrade. David J Dachtera (formerly dba) DJE Systems ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 12:36:25 -0700 (PDT) From: Didier_Toulouse Subject: Re: New contact details for Guy Peleg Message-ID: <75db242c-bc13-426e-bbeb-5c2bd1e8a481@s37g2000prg.googlegroups.com> > Should you find yourself with more business than you can handle, please > remember your colleagues out here in VMS-land who are still trying to > feed and house their families from their OpenVMS income. > > David J Dachtera > (formerly dba) DJE Systems +1 :-) DTL ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 15:32:32 -0700 From: "Tom Linden" Subject: Re: OpenVMS Integrity + Blades Testimonials - Financial and Telecom Markets Message-ID: On Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:15:52 -0700, Dan Notov wrote: > JF Mezei wrote: >> Main, Kerry wrote: >> >>>> The VMS licence for the blade is the cheapest level of licence. IIRC >>>> £700 per core for FOE >>> Just want to emphasize that the larger blades are not just for >>> small-med >>> businesses when you consider their spec's: >>> >>> - dual core (4 cpu) >>> - 96GB memory >>> - dual FC connectivity >>> - 2 x dual GB network (4 ports total) >> Doesn't HP make most of its money on the blade cabinet ? >> For instance, say a blade box has 16 slots for CPU cards. >> At what point does buying a Blade solution become more cost effective >> than buying individual 1U servers ? 4 ? 8 ? 10 ? >> > Try for yourself, if you can stand to use Flash: > http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/downloads/BladeTCO112607.swf > > Also, please note that this is an X86 tool comparing equivalent blade > and rack servers. > > Most TCO analyses I've done points to 4 blades where SAN is included in > the mix. I looked at that analysis. When they say 1U Intel server do they mean Itanium? The prices quoted on the perpherals were unrealistically high. The prices for port and cables for both ethernet and SAN are between 6 to 10 times higher than market. It looks like the price for the configured 1U servers is about $14.5K @ , makes 8 DS10L's look pretty attractive, ore even a couple of ES40s. Can't comment on power costs, again for DS10Ls it would be small Software costs, don't know what this is based on. I think I could build an 8-cluster DS10L with a 2TB HSG80 for a total outlay of of about $10K including console server and it would probably consume about 1200W at most. -- PL/I for OpenVMS www.kednos.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:51:11 -0400 From: JF Mezei Subject: Re: OpenVMS Integrity + Blades Testimonials - Financial and Telecom Markets Mark Message-ID: <47fa894c$0$12328$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com> Main, Kerry wrote: >> The VMS licence for the blade is the cheapest level of licence. IIRC >> £700 per core for FOE > > Just want to emphasize that the larger blades are not just for small-med > businesses when you consider their spec's: > > - dual core (4 cpu) > - 96GB memory > - dual FC connectivity > - 2 x dual GB network (4 ports total) Doesn't HP make most of its money on the blade cabinet ? For instance, say a blade box has 16 slots for CPU cards. At what point does buying a Blade solution become more cost effective than buying individual 1U servers ? 4 ? 8 ? 10 ? ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 17:35:38 -0700 (PDT) From: AEF Subject: Re: OT: RIP Arthur C. Clarke Message-ID: [...] More on Mr. Clarke: This is from a recent International Dark-Sky Association (IDA - http://www.darksky.org/ ) e-news email I received on Apr 3, 2008: IDA Mourns the Passing of Sir Arthur C. Clarke As a long-time supporter of dark skies and IDA, Sir Arthur C. Clarke became IDA's second lifetime member in March 1992. He will long be remembered for his tremendous contributions. Arthur C. Clarke: Luminaires Pay Tribute by Clara Moskowitz, Space.com, March 19, 2008 ... As news of Arthur C. Clarke's death spread through communities of scientists, writers and science fiction fans, many people shared their memories of how the visionary writer, inventor and futurist inspired and influenced them. The following is an excerpt of a letter to IDA from Sir Arthur C. Clarke, published in the IDA Newsletter, December 2001, Issue #48 Light pollution is essentially a phenomenon that emerged during the 20th century, thanks to the spread of urbanization and electrification. In just a few decades, it has become a major problem that prevents millions of people from accessing clear night skies. Is it not a tragedy that our children and grandchildren cannot enjoy the night sky the way our forefathers have looked at it with awe and interest for thousands of years? I have been a keen amateur astronomer for most of my life, and little did I imagine that someday I would be part of a crusade to preserve the wilderness of the sky that I took for granted in my youth. Yet it is not too late to save our skies: we can achieve this through heightened awareness, correct planning, and appropriate use of lighting technology. Your active participation and campaigning with the IDA can help ensure that the nights are restored to what they ought to be in as many locations as possible. All good wishes, Sir Arthur C. Clarke AEF ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 12:39:46 -0700 (PDT) From: Didier_Toulouse Subject: Php invented by a former DECcie ? Message-ID: Hello Pals, Long time no noise :-) I'm learning Php, and I find a lot of similarities (is that a genuine English word ???) with DCL. Does anyone know if the Folk who created this language used to work for DEC before? Just to ask. Bye for know, I'm studying variables substitution... DTL ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 16:10:06 -0400 From: "Ken Robinson" Subject: Re: Php invented by a former DECcie ? Message-ID: <7dd80f60804071310q46eb50edn7f9547a235bfb67c@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 3:39 PM, Didier_Toulouse wrote: > Hello Pals, > > Long time no noise :-) > > I'm learning Php, and I find a lot of similarities (is that a genuine > English word ???) with DCL. PHP is more like C than DCL Ken ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 17:19:57 -0400 From: John Reagan Subject: Re: Php invented by a former DECcie ? Message-ID: Didier_Toulouse wrote: > Hello Pals, > > Long time no noise :-) > > I'm learning Php, and I find a lot of similarities (is that a genuine > English word ???) with DCL. > > Does anyone know if the Folk who created this language used to work > for DEC before? > > Just to ask. > > Bye for know, I'm studying variables substitution... > > DTL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Php has lots of info. Nothing hints at a DEC or DCL past. -- John Reagan OpenVMS Pascal/Macro-32/COBOL Project Leader Hewlett-Packard Company ------------------------------ Date: 7 Apr 2008 22:02:52 GMT From: billg999@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) Subject: Re: Php invented by a former DECcie ? Message-ID: <65vk0cF2hp4omU1@mid.individual.net> In article <7dd80f60804071310q46eb50edn7f9547a235bfb67c@mail.gmail.com>, "Ken Robinson" writes: > On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 3:39 PM, Didier_Toulouse > wrote: >> Hello Pals, >> >> Long time no noise :-) >> >> I'm learning Php, and I find a lot of similarities (is that a genuine >> English word ???) with DCL. > > PHP is more like C than DCL PHP is more like a steaming, stinking pile of dung than any usable computer programming language. bill -- Bill Gunshannon | de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n. Three wolves billg999@cs.scranton.edu | and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. University of Scranton | Scranton, Pennsylvania | #include ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:13:15 -0400 From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?= Subject: Re: Php invented by a former DECcie ? Message-ID: <47fac6a4$0$90266$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> Didier_Toulouse wrote: > I'm learning Php, and I find a lot of similarities (is that a genuine > English word ???) with DCL. > > Does anyone know if the Folk who created this language used to work > for DEC before? Rasmus Lerdorf has as far as I know never worked for DEC. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasmus_Lerdorf) Its two main influencers are C and Perl. But the entire family of dynamical typed languages (PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby etc.) do share some basic concepts with DCL. And no surprise - they have been designed to be easy and fast to use. Arne ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:21:12 -0400 From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?= Subject: Re: Php invented by a former DECcie ? Message-ID: <47fac881$0$90276$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> Bill Gunshannon wrote: > PHP is more like a steaming, stinking pile of dung than any usable > computer programming language. Within its intended area of usage it is actually an OK language. It is possible to write quite well structured code using PHP. PHP' bad reputation comes mostly from the fact that 14 year olds can write pretty feature rich web apps in it - and did so. And even though the result looked very good for the end user, then programmers tasked with maintaining and extending it got a nightmare. Arne ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:26:00 -0400 From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?= Subject: Re: Php invented by a former DECcie ? Message-ID: <47fac9a1$0$90276$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> Didier_Toulouse wrote: > I'm learning Php, Be sure to learn PHP properly: PHP5, OOP, mysqli not mysql (or even better PDO), DOM not DOM XML, various Pear etc.. Arne ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2008 12:57:35 +0930 From: Jeremy Begg Subject: Re: System Programming Resources for Alpha Architecture Message-ID: Hello Tom, What you "missed" was that the OP's message was cross-posted to comp.sys.dec and in that newsgroup the focus is more on the hardware than the software. The original request was for any information relevant to programming on Alpha and not necessarily VMS-related. Regards, Jeremy Begg Tom Linden wrote: > On Sun, 06 Apr 2008 13:32:58 -0700, wrote: > >> On Apr 6, 12:54 am, "Tom Linden" wrote: >> >>> On Sat, 05 Apr 2008 20:59:43 -0700, wrote: >>> > I've made a nice little collection of alpha programming related links >>> > on my site:http://mattst88.com/?page=links#alpha >>> > Hope you find them useful. >>> >>> In the VMS world SDL was something useful. Why are you posting this >>> here? >>> >>> -- >>> PL/I for OpenVMSwww.kednos.com >> >> >> I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. >> >> I posted a collections of relevant links I've gathered about >> programming for alpha. What did I do wrong? > > Maybe I missed something, but I didn't see anything relevant to VMS > and as John mentioned SDL is the language neutral declaration language > on VMS. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:57:26 -0700 From: "Tom Linden" Subject: Re: System Programming Resources for Alpha Architecture Message-ID: On Mon, 07 Apr 2008 20:27:35 -0700, Jeremy Begg wrote: > Hello Tom, > What you "missed" was that the OP's message was cross-posted to > comp.sys.dec and in that newsgroup the focus is more on the hardware > than the software. The original request was for any information relevant > to programming on Alpha and not necessarily VMS-related. > Regards, > Jeremy Begg > Hi Jeremy, Fair enough, however, unless you are doing absolute address programming it doesn't make too much sense since the techniques and tools on VMS are very different from that on Tru64 or Linux. At the assembler level you could share techniques I suppose, but then why would anyone want to use an assembly language. -- PL/I for OpenVMS www.kednos.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:31:34 -0400 From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?= Subject: Re: yet another compress question Message-ID: <47facaee$0$90276$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> parnold@bellfruitgames.co.uk wrote: > On Apr 7, 3:07 pm, "P. Sture" wrote: >> Have you had a look at this one? >> >> http://mvb.saic.com/freeware/freewarev40/compress_vms/ > > Yes, unfortunately it expects the first 2 "magic bytes" to be 1F 9D :( If compress/zcompress/unix compress is not it, then lzcmp & lzdcmp could be an option. It is 12-15 years since I have last seen one of those, but it can still be found. http://mvb.saic.com/freeware/94bvmslt/tools/ has both that and other tools. Arne ------------------------------ End of INFO-VAX 2008.196 ************************