INFO-VAX Sun, 18 Mar 2007 Volume 2007 : Issue 153 Contents: Re: AMD's well may be running dry Re: AMD's well may be running dry Re: AMD's well may be running dry Re: AMD's well may be running dry Re: AMD's well may be running dry Re: AMD's well may be running dry Re: AMD's well may be running dry Re: AMD's well may be running dry Re: Cool new features in OpenVMS 8.3 Re: Cool new features in OpenVMS 8.3 Itanium exception handling performance Re: Itanium exception handling performance OpenVMS Hobbyist error and question Re: OT: IBM's Power to power Boeing's 787 Re: Please keep the religious drivel out of comp.os.vms Re: Power Consumption Re: Suggestion for the VMS X-windows server Re: Suggestion for the VMS X-windows server Re: VMS Encryption bundled in 8.3 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2007 18:13:38 +0000 (UTC) From: david20@alpha2.mdx.ac.uk Subject: Re: AMD's well may be running dry Message-ID: In article , Tad Winters writes: >JF Mezei wrote in >news:415c0$45faf5c4$cef8887a$2191@TEKSAVVY.COM: > >> >> Consider also that airlines dump CO2 in upper atmoshere where plants >> can't get to it. The minute it goes out the jet engines, it is >> contributing to rising temperatures. At least the gas that comes out >> of the SUV/Hummers people drive takes a number of years before it >> reaches the upper atmosphere, and at least while still near the >> ground, those gases have a chance to be captured by plants. >> >> Sorry, but people who refuse to accept the fact that CO2 is harming >> the planet are like ultra religious people who refused to accept the >> fact that the earth is not the centre of the universe. >> > >Interesting! So CO2 is making it's way up into the atmosphere, even though >its molecular weight is greater than O2 and N2? Due to mixing the composition of the atmosphere is relatively uniform below the turbopause (about 100 km). This region is known as the homosphere. Above this region the lack of mixing allows the composition to vary based as you suggest upon the molar masses of the chemical species involved. This region is known as the heterosphere. See http://www.answers.com/topic/upper-atmosphere in particular the section on the heterosphere. David Webb Security team leader CCSS Middlesex University ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2007 14:06:57 -0400 From: Bill Todd Subject: Re: AMD's well may be running dry Message-ID: davidc@montagar.com wrote: ... > But still, you haven't answered the question: Where Does This Tax Go? He answered it by stating that that was a separate issue: allocation of revenues need not directly track where they came from, though absent responsible government that's one way to limit waste. > Since everything is takes some amount of energy to produce, all you've > done is raise the price of everything You really need to read a lot more carefully if you don't want to look incompetent. The tax is not on energy consumption per se, but on fossil fuel consumption - that's the whole point of it. So it encourages use of renewable energy sources in production, and discourages demand for products that use nonrenewable energy sources (in this particular case, fossil fuels) promiscuously. - bill ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2007 14:36:36 -0400 From: Bill Todd Subject: Re: AMD's well may be running dry Message-ID: Bill Todd wrote: ... most people only buy > as much insulation in hot or cold climates as 'makes economic sense' *at > the moment* - rather than buying considerably more in order to reduce > energy use. > > And the sad part is that the economic optimum in this case has a *very* > broad minimum: for literally a few percent higher net outlay (even > after amortizing the up-front costs over time - and I'm talking about a > few percent of the net insulating-plus-heating/cooling costs over time, > not the entire house cost) you can at least halve your house's > heating/cooling load. And that's based on the figures I worked through > 15 years ago when building our own house and fossil fuel prices were > considerably lower than they are today. I'm afraid that I gave 'most people' more credit than they typically deserve above. Because the optimum has such a broad minimum, most people tend to choose up-front cash savings over long-term efficiency, so they insulate *less* than actually makes economic sense (thus winding up paying just as much over time as they would have if they had gone to the other extreme and insulated heavily enough to make a major difference in energy consumption). That's the free market for you, and that's why it is nothing like a reasonable solution for this problem (any more than it would serve as a suitable substitute for a legal system - at least if you believe in anything more civilized than the law of the jungle). - bill ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2007 17:16:21 -0400 From: JF Mezei Subject: Re: AMD's well may be running dry Message-ID: n.rieck@sympatico.ca wrote: > "serpent". I know of no one who has ever experienced a talking snake I am sure it has been done in Hollywood before. Heck, there was even a recent movie about Snakes On A Plane :-) Bet you that the concept of snakes on a plane would have translated into "Flying Snakes" in the bible. And when an illustrator for the bible would have been asked to portray a flying snake, he would have added devilish wings to a snake. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Mar 2007 15:27:38 -0700 From: davidc@montagar.com Subject: Re: AMD's well may be running dry Message-ID: <1174170458.863463.192770@d57g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> On Mar 17, 1:06 pm, Bill Todd wrote: > dav...@montagar.comwrote: > > ... > > > But still, you haven't answered the question: Where Does This Tax Go? > > He answered it by stating that that was a separate issue: allocation of > revenues need not directly track where they came from, though absent > responsible government that's one way to limit waste. But that's not an answer. That's sweeping the question under the rug. I ask where it goes, and you tell me the allocation doesn't track where it came from. So, where is it allocated TO? You are talking about instituting likely billions of dollars of taxes for all international imports/exports, and his answer is (from his post): "Actually, it doesn't matter where the tax on fossil fuels goes." > > Since everything is takes some amount of energy to produce, all you've > > done is raise the price of everything > > You really need to read a lot more carefully if you don't want to look > incompetent. I read it fine. > The tax is not on energy consumption per se, but on fossil fuel > consumption - that's the whole point of it. So it encourages use of > renewable energy sources in production, and discourages demand for > products that use nonrenewable energy sources (in this particular case, > fossil fuels) promiscuously. Almost everything we get here are from China and other countries heavily into fossil fuels, or have parts producted from these same countries. Look at your local Wal-Mart and find a product MADE in the USA. Not assembled in the USA, but MADE in the USA. I'd wager this little tax would make pretty much everything in Wal-Mart go up in price. And since we're paying more for all these goods, where does this tax end up going? No one really wants to take this question on, despite your assertions. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Mar 2007 16:17:02 -0700 From: davidc@montagar.com Subject: Re: AMD's well may be running dry Message-ID: <1174173422.531496.298580@d57g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> On Mar 17, 8:24 am, "AEF" wrote: > Cigarette smoking is an unusual case as it is addicitve. I personally > know of someone who claimed he quit because it was too expensive. Yeah, but just taxing something is not going to make everything better. Cigarettes are an example of that. Addictive? Okay, I want you to kick the fossil fuel addiction you got for a few days. No transportation (even public, since they use fossil fuels!), no electricity (coal-fired plants, etc). And likely no food or water (farms use diesel, and water purification plants use electricity as listed above). I know, you can quit anytime you want. > Not all poor people smoke. I doubt any cries from the poor being > poorer due to smoking result in additional gov't benefits that come > close to the cost of smoking. Actually yes, since they demand more public health care which comes from what again? > Hey, two of the space shuttles blew up! I guess that means rockets > don't work. Reductio ad absurdum? You've done that before with the "Well, why not just get rid of gov't altogether?" comment. What you seem to fail to understand, and Ted seems to, is that taxes are not a good method to change behavior that the government thinks is "moral". Cigarette taxes are an example of that. It's quite different than taxes which are used to provide some public benefit, like schools, roads, libraries. Taxes like you are proposing are more likely to cause black market effects (much like France and Germanys underhanded deals with the "Oil for Food" sanctions against Iraq). Your tax will likely hit those that can't afford it the most, benefits those are the ones presumably to be "punished" via an artificial transfer of wealth, result in an increased government to manage all this mess, and at the end of the day will probably have little impact on CO2 emissions. Again, I have no trouble with the idea of getting off fossil fuels, but if you look at the actions today, there is already movement in that direction since the economy of oil/gas/coal is shifting, technologies are improving, and alternatives are becoming more economically competitive. This will have more of an positive impact that any tax. Personally, I'd like the US to be free of foreign energy needs. It would make the US more economically secure. It would reduce dependence on a non-renewable resource (who in the world manufactures crude oil or coal, again?). I think the CO2 argument is a red herring, since other "green house" gases are in abundance as well, yet aren't somehow "taxed" or of concern, like water vapor, and methane from cow waste. Well, let me take that back, California is thinking of taxing cow waste... ------------------------------ Date: 17 Mar 2007 16:52:50 -0700 From: "AEF" Subject: Re: AMD's well may be running dry Message-ID: <1174175570.490401.41280@d57g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> On Mar 17, 12:34 pm, dav...@montagar.com wrote: > On Mar 16, 3:32 pm, JF Mezei wrote: > > > dav...@montagar.com wrote: > > > That's nuts. So, where does this "tax" go? It sure doesn't make the > > > oil any more or less polluting. Maybe it will go in investments in > > > other energy? Nah, legislators will pipe it into their own pet > > > projects and pork barrel plans > > > Actually, it doesn't matter where the tax on fossil fuels goes. What matter is > > that it is accounted, and that exports/imports are levied that tax at a standard > > rate (percentage of current price for barrel of oil for instance). > > Okay, so exactly how do you get some of these "polluting" nations, > such as the coal-based Chinese to agree to tax their goods for the > benefit of Canadian "carbon tax"? Since China is a developing > country, the WTO will slap that down faster than anything. Good luck > getting that through. > > But still, you haven't answered the question: Where Does This Tax Go? I did answer it and you missed it: > > result. The same idea can be used for a carbon tax. What happens to > > the collected tax is another matter, of course, but it could be used > > to reduce all other taxes and it would still reduce CO2 emissions. > Since everything is takes some amount of energy to produce, all you've > done is raise the price of everything - and you now have the status > quo, which higher prices and wages. The net effect is that the > government is being given money to squander in order to manage nothing > at the expense of the citizenry - and to boot, it will probably hurt > those most unable to accomidate it (i.e. Al Gore certainly isn't > lowering his standard of living, though YOU are supposed to). You have no imagination or ability to see the future as anything but the present. Making carbon-based fuels more expensive will encourage development of less harmful fuels or ways to trap the carbon. Even the auto makers are in favor of curing carbon dioxide emissions. > > You're idea sounds almost like the Monty Python sketch where Graham > Chapman's character said "I think we should tax all foreigners living > abroad", and makes about as much sense. Relativity sounded pretty crazy, too, once. But GPS depends on it, including general relativity! Quantum mechanics is as crazy as nature gets, but is fully verified by experiment, and you wouldn't have modern computers without it. AEF ------------------------------ Date: 17 Mar 2007 16:59:33 -0700 From: "AEF" Subject: Re: AMD's well may be running dry Message-ID: <1174175973.190210.232690@n76g2000hsh.googlegroups.com> On Mar 17, 12:46 pm, dav...@montagar.com wrote: > On Mar 16, 8:21 pm, "AEF" wrote: > > > On Mar 16, 10:43 am, dav...@montagar.com wrote: > > > > On Mar 15, 3:40 pm, JF Mezei wrote: > > > > > What is really needed is a per capita CO2 emission target adjusted for latitude > > > > (to take into account heating costs for survival in winter). And you also need > > > > a "fossil fuel added tax" similar to a VAT to help for fair accounting. > > > > That's nuts. So, where does this "tax" go? It sure doesn't make the > > > oil any more or less polluting. Maybe it will go in investments in > > > No, but by making use of oil more expensive it encourages people to > > use less of it, which reduces the total pollution. I remember learning > > about this in college: the method of taxing pollution. > > Pollution (toxic chemicals) is what the course was about, I'd bet, not > CO2 as a pollutant. Otherwise, you've probably only recently > graduated and haven't learned that academic theory and real life > aren't always the same thing. I took this course in the late 1970's. Probably 1978 or 1979. > > Very few energy sources we current use don't produce CO2, those that > don't often have other hazards or problems. By "taxing" CO2 > production, you basically raise the price of everything, and you have > the status quo with a different pricing tier. Well, if global warming is as serious a problem as some make it out to be, we need to find a way to greatly reduce CO2 emissions without destroying the global economy. What I like about the tax idea is that avoids wasting huge amounts of money to obtain a very small reduction in pollutant. It automatically invokes the priniciple of diminishing returns and stops spending when the marginal cost exceeds the marginal benefit (or something like that). [...] > > > Do you have a suggestion that is immune to abuse? > > Supply and Demand. Sell something to someone that they want, that can > be made marketable. For instance, insulation and such is a godo > business around here in Texas (it get's a little hot). Why? Because > is saves you money. Yeah, it has the nice side effect of "saving the > planet", but that's not why most people do it - it's because it make > economic sense. Not nearly enough to be of help with reducing CO2 emissions. > > I tell you, when I can replace my shingles on my house with effective > solar-cell's that let me house generate it's own power for the A/C > during the day, I'm all for it. I'm all for alternative energies, but > it has to work, or it's not that alternatice. You'll be all for it until you see the bill. Maybe it's cheaper now, so go ahead! Don't let me stop you. > > Like I've said before, I believe in getting rid of fossil fuels, > because it's not replaceable. But there's a massive amount of it. We've had repeated cycles of "the end of oil" followed by more and more of it. AEF ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2007 18:12:33 +0000 (UTC) From: helbig@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply) Subject: Re: Cool new features in OpenVMS 8.3 Message-ID: In article , Doc writes: > VAX is dead, Probably, in the sense that there will probably be no more development. The originally promised 8.2 hasn't showed up, and now that ALPHA and Itanium are at 8.3, probably never will. > most emphatic in his presentation that the future is Itanium, that it has > sold more chips already than Alpha ever did, and the software will > continue to get faster. Are there more Itanium chips running VMS than there ever were ALPHA chips running VMS? ------------------------------ Date: 17 Mar 2007 11:24:01 -0700 From: "Ian Miller" Subject: Re: Cool new features in OpenVMS 8.3 Message-ID: <1174155841.228755.160440@e65g2000hsc.googlegroups.com> Truly BRUDEN do know VMS. The item on openvms.org was posted to point people at the Deathrow Cluster and to BRUDEN. The new features of VMS 8.3 are described in the fine documentation by HP http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/os83_index.html which has been available since 8.3 was released last year. The performace figures in Guy's presention are impressive though - i saw them at the VMS TUD on London. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2007 13:21:11 -0500 From: Dan Foster Subject: Itanium exception handling performance Message-ID: I'm curious -- why is exception handling performance so poor on Itanium? Lots of overhead? Translated calls? Something else? Noticed a mention of this in passing in the BRUDEN presentation PDF and wondered about the technical reasons for it. -Dan ------------------------------ Date: 17 Mar 2007 12:31:45 -0700 From: "Bob Gezelter" Subject: Re: Itanium exception handling performance Message-ID: <1174159905.719741.152250@d57g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> On Mar 17, 2:34 pm, Dan Foster wrote: > In article , Dan Foster wrote: > > I'm curious -- why is exception handling performance so poor on Itanium? > > Is it due to Itanium being a processor with high levels of instruction > level parallelism and flagging an exception would result in a pipeline > flush with a corresponding performance penalty? > > If so, I can see why exception handling would be 'expensive' as an > architectural limitation. > > I'm just not sure if there's more to it from the OpenVMS side, or if > it's just the (processor) architectural design itself. > > -Dan Dan, Actually, the pipelining on IA-64 is limited to what is explicitly specified by the instruction set (which is, after all, what EPIC - Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing means). Alpha is slower than VAX for a variety of reasons, pipelining is only one one of the issues. As a beginning, draw a simple table of the number of items that must be preserved on a context switch. With the VAX, it is the 16 general registers, plus assorted other information. On Alpha, the number of registers doubles.IA-64 has even more registers, and more context information to save. Consider the fact that one of the most expensive operations on Alpha was a procedure call, because of the call frame processing. Also consider that the register windowing on IA-64 addresses that specific issue. I do not have micro-level timing analyses of the fault processing, but I would expect that fault processing performance of IA-64 affects all of the systems, not OpenVMS specifically. - Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com ------------------------------ Date: 17 Mar 2007 18:19:27 -0700 From: yyyc186@hughes.net Subject: OpenVMS Hobbyist error and question Message-ID: <1174180767.522299.190470@p15g2000hsd.googlegroups.com> Hello all, I was wondering what the current version of OpenVMS Alpha is under the Hobbyist program, so thought I would just bounce through the "purchase" page and find out. Got the following error: ==================== -ERROR-(404): i/o error Requested method: GET Requested URL: /hobbyist/mount.html HTTP protocol: HTTP/1.1 -------- additional request headers -------- Host: www.montagar.com User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686 (x86_64); en-US; rv: 1.8.1.2) Gecko/20061023 SUSE/2.0.0.2-1.1 Firefox/2.0.0.2 Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/ html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5 Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5 Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7 Keep-Alive: 300 Connection:Close Referer: http://www.openvmshobbyist.com/get_yer_licenses/index.html ======================= Don't know if they are aware of this or not. Has 8.2 Alpha been released under the Hobbyist program yet? Seems that everything for Java and the other OpenSource things require 8.2 as a minimum. Thanks, Roland ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2007 20:51:50 +0100 From: Michael Unger Subject: Re: OT: IBM's Power to power Boeing's 787 Message-ID: <56315eF27faavU2@mid.individual.net> On 2007-03-09 20:37, "John Wallace" wrote: [Well, being a bit late on this topic -- but nevertheless ...] > "Michael Unger" wrote in message > news:55ciujF2441kgU1@mid.individual.net... > >>I am not aware of "VxWorks for Alpha". "Boeing 787" is a rather new product, and a processor/computer/OS to be incorporated into that aeroplane would have to be considered "actively sold and actively developed". > SPD number 51.39: "VxWorks[[R]] Realtime Tools for Alpha is a set of > programs, utilities and tools used for the development of dedicated, > embedded, and distributed realtime applications. [...] I've heard of this being mentioned, yes -- but I haven't heard of any *real* project/application, which most probably would have been VMEbus based. > [...] > >> I am not aware of any _low_ power Alpha chip. You most probably won't >> find an Itanic chip in these applications either. > > [...] > > Needs in the embedded market can of course be rather different than the > volume x86 market. DEC did design and produce "industry standard" VMEbus > cards based on EV4 (21064) and EV5 (21164) Alphas, using pretty much > industry standard VME power and cooling arrangements (give or take a bit). > Prior to that there had been a 21066/68-based VMEbus card too, with even > lower power (for those who haven't heard of it, 21066 was the > high-integration but low-performance EV4-derived chip used in Multia, I > forget what the codename was). I haven't heard of the 21064/21164 based VMEbus cards, but I *have* headrd of the 21066 based card -- and of its apparently rather low performance ("performance per watt", compared to contemporary 68k or PPC based designs). > [...] > > I'm not sure what conclusion one draws from the fact that Alpha-based > embedded products existed over ten years ago but were (and are) largely ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > invisible, even to readers of this newsgroup; perhaps one obvious conclusion ^^^^^^^^^ > is that this part of the market is tiny in terms of volume *and* value, so > why should a self-confessed "industry standard" chip/system/software vendor > care about it? Perhaps what DEC has been accused of many times -- "stealth marketing". > [...] Michael -- Real names enhance the probability of getting real answers. My e-mail account at DECUS Munich is no longer valid. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Mar 2007 14:31:29 -0700 From: davidc@montagar.com Subject: Re: Please keep the religious drivel out of comp.os.vms Message-ID: <1174167089.218060.5430@l75g2000hse.googlegroups.com> On Mar 17, 3:43 pm, "Malcolm Dunnett" wrote: > There is no text editor but EDT, those who think otherwise are heretics > !!!!! > > If God had meant for files to have lines longer than 255 characters he > would have put more columns on the VT52!!!! The Infidel has forsaken SOS! Remove his privileges! ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2007 17:21:19 -0400 From: JF Mezei Subject: Re: Power Consumption Message-ID: Robert Deininger wrote: > So an Itanium CPU emits a little less heat tha a person - about 75-130 > watts, depending on the model. What average percentage would the CPU represent for total power consumption for a system with one disk drive ? aka, if you have a CPU of 100watts, what would be the likely total power consukption once you factor in the disk, memory, other chips and even the fans ? > Actually, a lot, maybe most, of the power used by a disk drive is friction > between the spinning platters and the air in the drive. A modern 10,000 > or 15,000 RPM drive is pretty warm when you touch it. The circuit board > side is much cooler than the body of the drive itself. Any thoughts of putting disks in vacuum ? wouldn't this greatly reduce air resistance as well as making it easier for the heads to move since there wouldn't be a strong current of air to fight against ? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2007 03:13:13 GMT From: "FredK" Subject: Re: Suggestion for the VMS X-windows server Message-ID: Not possible. 1) X11 does not know what the process is. All it knows is the connection - which "might" know who the user is - and it might not be local. 2) The act of popping up an alert may well cause the failure. "JF Mezei" wrote in message news:231b$45fc67bc$cef8887a$10368@TEKSAVVY.COM... > When the X server is "running low on memory" (eg: PGFILQUOTA running below > a certain threshold), it should pop up an alert telling the user that the > X server is running low on memory (with perhaps an identification of which > process/window has made the request that cause the X server to go below > the threashold). > > AKA: When mozilla goes nuts because it is trying to display some huge blog > page filled with images, the X server should warn the user before Mozilla > becomes unresponsive and not only he STOP button no longer works, but > neither does the window manager's "close window". And at one point, even > CTRL-Y fails to work. > ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2007 01:29:22 -0400 From: JF Mezei Subject: Re: Suggestion for the VMS X-windows server Message-ID: FredK wrote: > Not possible. 1) X11 does not know what the process is. All it knows is > the connection - which "might" know who the user is - and it might not be > local. 2) The act of popping up an alert may well cause the failure. Point taken for point 1. But it could at least provide a hint on the connection. But for 2, the point is to raise the alarm before the X server becomes unresponsible. Or perhaps generate an opcom message ? ------------------------------ Date: 17 Mar 2007 22:54:31 GMT From: Doc Subject: Re: VMS Encryption bundled in 8.3 Message-ID: Arne Vajhøj wrote in news:45fc6825$0$90276$14726298@news.sunsite.dk: > Larry Kilgallen wrote: >> In article <1174133391.403489.149340@y66g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>, >> "n.rieck@sympatico.ca" writes: >> >>> Oops. I forgot to mention: >>> $BACKUP/ENCRYPT >> >> That has been in VMS for many years. >> >> The only difference is that the VMS Encryption product is now >> bundled. On VMS V8.2 you could install it without an additional >> license. Prior to that you had to buy a separate license. > > What algorithm did they use and are using today ? From what I remember about Guy's presentation the old version that came as a separate package was DES. Latest version supports AES. See slide 31 in the 8.3 new features Powerpoint presentation on Deathrow for a full list of supported algorithms. Doc. ------------------------------ End of INFO-VAX 2007.153 ************************