INFO-VAX Fri, 13 Jun 2008 Volume 2008 : Issue 329 Contents: Re: Chuck Norris says "Drill now in America for oil" Re: Chuck Norris says "Drill now in America for oil" Re: Chuck Norris says "Drill now in America for oil" Re: Chuck Norris says "Drill now in America for oil" Re: Chuck Norris says "Drill now in America for oil" Re: Chuck Norris says "Drill now in America for oil" Re: Chuck Norris says "Drill now in America for oil" Re: Chuck Norris says "Drill now in America for oil" Re: Instructions setting up reverse LAT port on RSX11 Re: Interesting job ad from HP Re: Interesting job ad from HP Re: OpenVMS for Small and Medium Businesses? Re: OpenVMS for Small and Medium Businesses? Re: OpenVMS for Small and Medium Businesses? Re: OpenVMS for Small and Medium Businesses? OT?: VMS, realtime, VAXELN, QNX, VxWorks (and a little marketing) PCL and PDF support in DCPS. Re: PCL and PDF support in DCPS. Re: PCL and PDF support in DCPS. Re: PCL and PDF support in DCPS. Re: PCL and PDF support in DCPS. Re: TCPware 5.8 and MIME Re: Universal healthcare in England failing - boy dies ! Re: Universal healthcare in England failing - boy dies ! Re: Weendoze for a VMS bigot Re: Weendoze for a VMS bigot Re: Weendoze for a VMS bigot Re: Weendoze for a VMS bigot where is S.Schweda's OpenVMS-ports web-site? Re: where is S.Schweda's OpenVMS-ports web-site? where is S.Schweda's OpenVMS-ports web-site? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 13 Jun 2008 07:39:19 -0500 From: koehler@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) Subject: Re: Chuck Norris says "Drill now in America for oil" Message-ID: In article , ultradwc@gmail.com writes: > we have 68 billion barrels of oil sitting in this country but the > democrats > who are in bed with the environmentalists will not allow drilling ... OK, so we give up the environment forever and we get a few days worth of oil. I'm sure my mutual funds have lots of investments in oil companies, but I'm not greedy enough to kill off my children's future. ------------------------------ Date: 13 Jun 2008 13:27:04 GMT From: VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG Subject: Re: Chuck Norris says "Drill now in America for oil" Message-ID: <485275a8$0$4997$607ed4bc@cv.net> In article , koehler@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) writes: >In article , ultradwc@gmail.com writes: >> we have 68 billion barrels of oil sitting in this country but the >> democrats >> who are in bed with the environmentalists will not allow drilling ... > > OK, so we give up the environment forever and we get a few days worth > of oil. We have more than a few days worth of oil -- don't fool yourself. However, the problem isn't the lack of supply. We've actually been using less oil than in the past. What is needed is some constraints on the speculation that has been driving the prices to levels way, way outside of the supply and demand economic equilibrium point. > I'm sure my mutual funds have lots of investments in oil companies, > but I'm not greedy enough to kill off my children's future. That's right... let's first suck the middle east dry and kill off their future. :) -- 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: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 13:28:23 +0000 (UTC) From: m.kraemer@gsi.de (Michael Kraemer) Subject: Re: Chuck Norris says "Drill now in America for oil" Message-ID: In article , ultradwc@gmail.com writes: > we have 68 billion barrels of oil sitting in this country but the > democrats > who are in bed with the environmentalists will not allow drilling ... so let's hope the democrats win and the US finally makes some progress, after 8 lost years under Bush, and another 8 lost years under Reagan. > > well, my family and this country is more important than snails or > owls, definitely not. > and Chcuk Norris agrees ... who the f*** is Norris ? > http://youtube.com/watch?v=cXOdI5XzcM0&feature=related ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 07:40:02 -0600 From: Dan O'Reilly Subject: Re: Chuck Norris says "Drill now in America for oil" Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.2.20080613071815.02344080@raptor.psccos.com> I just can't let this one pass. This isn't aimed at any one person, so please don't take it that way. "kill off my children's future". That's a great tag-line, full of emotion and absolutely no science. When I was in high school, the earth was going to freeze to a block of ice, but it didn't matter because we were going to be out of oil and lots of other resources by 1985 or so anyway. Like so many people, you live in the 70's when it comes to things like drilling for oil and, I'll bet, nuclear power as well. The techniques used to drill now are VASTLY different than they were 30 years ago and have nowhere near the ecological footprint they used to. For example, how many oil rigs were damaged or destroyed in hurricanes Katrina and Rita? Answer: over a hundred. How much damage to the ecology? Answer: none. Not one oil spill occurred. It's perfectly acceptable to allow China to drill off our coast, but not us - and I'll wager our drilling techniques are FAR better and safer than theirs. When the Alaska Pipeline was built, the environmentalists wrung their hands in sorrow for the herds of caribou that were going to die off because we've disturbed their environment - yet science has shown that the pipeline has directly contributed to their INCREASE in population. Al Gore can lie about 20' increases in the sea levels and drowning polar bears, and people lap that bilgewater up, begging for more. But the true scientists can band together and say "hold on, the science doesn't support that", and these same people call THEM liars or idiots, or "just in the pockets of Big Oil". These environmental alarmists are the same people who use models to "forecast" the future, showing how doomed we are if we don't give up our way of life, but these same models can't even "forecast" the weather and climate we've seen in the past, supported by REAL data. And we're supposed to swallow that hook, line and sinker. Just shut up and park your car, and pay your higher energy and food bills while being thankful Al Gore came along as our saviour. It's the same thing with nuclear power. People live in the 70's with that too. The types of reactors in "The China Syndrome" aren't even built anymore, they've been far surpassed by better, safer technology. The same with Three Mile Island. Don't even bring up Chernobyl - that was a soviet-style fiasco that could never happen in the US. Wind power and solar power are pipe dreams; they're unrealistic in what they provide for the resources (for example, vast land acreages) they consume and their cost. Biofuels are turning out to be one of the worst mandates in many years by the governments of the world ("let's burn our food instead of eating it, and let's put more acres into that instead of other cereal grains and such"). At 06:39 AM 6/13/2008, Bob Koehler wrote: >In article >, >ultradwc@gmail.com writes: > > we have 68 billion barrels of oil sitting in this country but the > > democrats > > who are in bed with the environmentalists will not allow drilling ... > > OK, so we give up the environment forever and we get a few days worth > of oil. > > I'm sure my mutual funds have lots of investments in oil companies, > but I'm not greedy enough to kill off my children's future. > ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 08:11:01 -0700 (PDT) From: ultradwc@gmail.com Subject: Re: Chuck Norris says "Drill now in America for oil" Message-ID: On Jun 13, 9:28 am, m.krae...@gsi.de (Michael Kraemer) wrote: > In article , > > ultra...@gmail.com writes: > > we have 68 billion barrels of oil sitting in this country but the > > democrats > > who are in bed with the environmentalists will not allow drilling ... > > so let's hope the democrats win and the US finally makes some progress, > after 8 lost years under Bush, and another 8 lost years under Reagan. > > > > > well, my family and this country is more important than snails or > > owls, > > definitely not. > > > and Chcuk Norris agrees ... > > who the f*** is Norris ? > > >http://youtube.com/watch?v=cXOdI5XzcM0&feature=related what are you smoking? The republicans have tried for years to allow drilling but the dems have blocked it every time ... the dems now control congress and just voted down not only the right to drill but to cut the 25 cent gas tax ... so if you think things are going to change ... you are smoking something ... ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 08:17:20 -0700 (PDT) From: ultradwc@gmail.com Subject: Re: Chuck Norris says "Drill now in America for oil" Message-ID: <820d9f14-9ab1-4120-8e46-8911cd92dbed@r66g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> On Jun 13, 8:39 am, koeh...@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) wrote: > In article , ultra...@gmail.com writes: > > > we have 68 billion barrels of oil sitting in this country but the > > democrats > > who are in bed with the environmentalists will not allow drilling ... > > OK, so we give up the environment forever and we get a few days worth > of oil. > > I'm sure my mutual funds have lots of investments in oil companies, > but I'm not greedy enough to kill off my children's future. few days worth of oil? a spokesman from exxon just did an interview on fox and said 68 BILLION barrels of oil are sitting in the gulf, alaska and the west ... that is hardly a few days worth ... and just like Dan states below, when rigs fail now, they do not dump oil and damage anything ... you are still living in the past ... time to get to speed with the technology ... ------------------------------ Date: 13 Jun 2008 12:26:35 -0500 From: koehler@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) Subject: Re: Chuck Norris says "Drill now in America for oil" Message-ID: In article <6.1.2.0.2.20080613071815.02344080@raptor.psccos.com>, Dan O'Reilly writes: > > Like so many people, you live in the 70's when it comes to things like > drilling for oil and, I'll bet, nuclear power as well. You'ld be wrong. I have real experience with real people in real industries. Depite all the planning. work, and top-level management commitment, it only take sone guy who just doesn't get it to create a disaster drilling for oil. The CEO can't reach out to every man in the field and move his hands, he can only fire they guy and pay the fines after. I'm a proponent of nukes, have always been, and feel that Three Mile Island is a good example of built-in safety overcomming extreem incompetence, resulting in no harm done. I was exagerating when I said the oil we could tap into would only last a few days. It won't last long enough to solve anybody's problem. And here on c.o.v we don't have to look very far to find those fellows who just don't get it. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 13:48:55 -0400 From: JF Mezei Subject: Re: Chuck Norris says "Drill now in America for oil" Message-ID: <4852b42a$0$12336$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com> VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote: > We have more than a few days worth of oil -- don't fool yourself. However, > the problem isn't the lack of supply. We've actually been using less oil > than in the past. What is needed is some constraints on the speculation > that has been driving the prices to levels way, way outside of the supply > and demand economic equilibrium point. The current regime in Washington has taken every step to help its oil business. Heck, at the current oil prices, even Bush even might be able to run his oil company without running it into thr ground and requiring a bail out by a certain arab family. If the USA government wanted to send a strong message about future oil consumption, it would simply announce that *all* passenger vehicles would have to abide by strong fuel consumption rules. (right now, they apply to "cars", and those contraptions called SUVs were lobbied by the car industry as "trucks" and not bound by those standards). As long as the USA refuses to move towards seriously reducing oil consumption (as a nation), the USA (as a nation) cannot tell China and India to move in the same direction. As a result, worldwide demand continues to grow, and production isn't going to increase much. So prices go up. The USA addiction to oil is far more serious than americans realise. The money is shifting to new countries like the middle east, singapore and china. And as the USD drops in value, USA corporations become apetizing. (One reason InBev wants to buy the owner of the Budweiser brand.) Look at where the money came to bail out a number of USA banks recently: middle east (a UAE fund now owns a big chunk of Citibank), Singapore and China. A few years ago, democrats went ballistic when the DPW transction was about to be signed. God forbid a foreign corporation would lease space in USA ports. Now, huge arab investment in Citibank to bail it out over a weekend, and not a peep, not a word. It was accepted. We're not talking leases here, we're talking ownership of a large block of shares. Already, the USA has lost its muscle against China because China owns so much of the USA's national debt, so China is now in a position of telling the USA what to do instead of the other way around. Cities need to restructure themselves and build up mass transit. Not easy for a city like Los Angeles designed against mass transit, but it is possible. It has to start NOW so that it can be useful when it really counts in 20 or so years when oil starts to actually run out. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 09:39:22 +0200 From: Johnny Billquist Subject: Re: Instructions setting up reverse LAT port on RSX11 Message-ID: Rob Brown skrev: > On Wed, 11 Jun 2008, Johnny Billquist wrote: > >> Jeff. You don't have to do the IO.ORG QIO$ call. Any IO.RVB or IO.WVB >> will implicitly do the connection for you if one isn't established. >> This is all mentioned in section 6.2.4 of the DECnet-RSX Programmers >> Manual. Page 6-10. > > I often found that an implicit connection was not good enough, giving > results that Jeff reported earlier. Then an explicit connection was > required. > >> You should be able to just do a PIP TTnn:=LB:[1,2]LOGIN.TXT, and the >> file should turn up on the remote terminal. If it don't then something >> isn't set up right. > > It didn't work for him and often did not for me. Your further advice > would be useful. I'm all ears. Let's try to crack this. :-) I have a setup right here with reverse LAT terminals, and for me it works fine to just do a copy. I also have a program that opens a terminal and writes to it, using RMS, which also works fine over LAT. That program is written in C, so I'm definitely not doing any IO.ORG calls. The program is not even aware of the fact that it's a terminal going over LAT. So obviously, in my experience, it works very well. The times when I've seen this, it has always been a case of either modem signalling problems, wrong setup on the DECserver, something coming in on the line, causing the terminal line to be "active", or something else that have been setup wrong. So for me, the first test is always to hook a plain video terminal to the DECserver, and try (from another terminal) to do a PIP TTnn:=file to see that it comes out correct on my video terminal. Once that works, then I can hook up whatever I actually want to have on the line, and setup the "right" program to access it. As long as the file copying don't work, I'll keep looking at things setup wrong, or possible data coming in on that line. Setting the line to full duplex and slave is probably a very good idea, since otherwise anything coming in can cause problems. Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt@softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 10:12:06 -0700 (PDT) From: yyyc186 Subject: Re: Interesting job ad from HP Message-ID: <72e101eb-8c6b-46d7-8488-0e5d9080601d@l42g2000hsc.googlegroups.com> On Jun 13, 3:46=A0am, Michael Kraemer wrote: > is crapware. But excessive reboots and downtime > are a matter of the past, one has to admit. > I hate to defend Windoze, but your rants are just BS, > and they don't do your favourite OS a favour. > If you want do bash Windoze, you should find some other reason. I don't do any Windows admin. The best MS got it to was each server crashing about 3 times per day. The client in question is the largest tax preparer in the U.S. Windows lack of stability is far from BS. It's a long way from being ready to run with the big dogs. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 10:29:42 -0700 (PDT) From: yyyc186 Subject: Re: Interesting job ad from HP Message-ID: <04e98bbb-0c6e-4ee4-af3f-1edf28b9139f@x41g2000hsb.googlegroups.com> On Jun 13, 3:58=A0am, Michael Kraemer wrote: > yyyc186 schrieb: > > > I've been in many production environments over the past 20 years. =A0NOT= > > ONE has had a Eunics machine stay up past 7 weeks. =A0I've NEVER seen > > ANY HP/UX installation make it more than 9 days no matter what > > hardware it was on. > > I doubt that you have seen many production environments > or that you have ever seen more than one HP-UX installation. > We use various flavours Unix for about just everything > for many years, including =A0mission critical real-time apps > (is radiotherapy critical enough for you ?), > and the uptime is only limited by the availability of power. You are speaking of an application which is real-time for only seconds or minutes. You are not describing an application running a box at 70+ % load for thousands of huors at a stretch. Achieving up time for a machine where the bulk of the up time is idle time is no great feat. > > I have the impression we must live on different planets. > Again, this is plain nonsense. > I use both, Google and eBay many times per day (and sometimes > even per night). Availability over the past 3 or 4 years: 100%. > May be you should check your ISP. It only seemed 100% because their outages where during your access times. They have both reported outages, some regional and some complete. Both of these companies are running on "The Swarm Principle". Gangs of $800 PC's placed on blades and packed into cabinets. The CPU's, being the same ones you are getting in your desktop machine, fail at an increased rate due to the addtional usage/heat/power fluctuations. All transactions and information which was on the blade containing the CPU from an $800 PC are lost and gone forever. Services losses have increased in number, but have reduced in size so they don't make CNN, unless an entire rack goes taking out service to an entire region. The $800 PC on a blade solution is fine when you are simply providing service to customers you don't give a sh*t about. It's a multi- million dollar fiasco if a metal or paper mill installs one of these systems. So no, I don't consider radiotherapy or radiation systems for cancer patients anywhere near the same universe as the mills. You have to stay functional for at most, 5 minutes at a time. There is plenty of idle time between patients for any needed reboot. I've watched my father wait for hours to get into treatment many times over. Seen the smallest idle time for the treatment machine be 15 minutes, normally closer to 30 minutes. You could run that with DR DOS and reboot from floppy each time. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:59:21 -0700 (PDT) From: IanMiller Subject: Re: OpenVMS for Small and Medium Businesses? Message-ID: <2b33dcf5-d2b0-439a-bda5-7ec52ef8a7c2@e39g2000hsf.googlegroups.com> Personally I think that the Quintera Secure Server (plug in and go web email server) or CommugiatePro (could be drop in replacement for an exchange server) are possible packages that could be used to sell to the SME ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 02:04:13 -0700 (PDT) From: johnwallace4@gmail.com Subject: Re: OpenVMS for Small and Medium Businesses? Message-ID: <42a44fee-9ddb-4e6e-a3a9-049a389bab96@34g2000hsf.googlegroups.com> On Jun 13, 1:09 am, D Gillbilly wrote: > OpenVMS for Small and Medium Businesses? > > http://64.223.189.234/node/719 > > Good article pointing out previous Vendor neglect. > > But you failed to mention the difficulty that established OpenVMS > pre-enterprise vendors have in trying to sell OpenVMS applications. > > (Nearly) Everyone is convinced that OpenVMS is dead. :-( > > It's enough to drive someone crazy. ;-) > > Duane > > Thanks Hoff for convincing me to try this grand adventure. I have learned a lot. > I may have made a couple of tactical errors, but I think my strategy is sound. > > I can loosely group the posts into chapters (working titles only). > > Chapter 1: "Just Ask The Vendor" was a noobs attempt at irritating The Vendor > into having another look at OpenVMS. > > Chapter 2: "Small IS Big" was an attempt to share some ideas on some of > the advantages of OpenVMS (from my perspective) and of course, irritate The > Vendor into having another look at OpenVMS (or again, try to convince anyone to > ask about OpenVMS). > > Chapter 3: "Can You See Me Now" is an attempt to raise the visibility of > OpenVMS without resorting to any marketing. > > I have multiple other chapters already in the works, but I fear I may be > trying to achieve too much too fast. > > I am not sure The Vendor is yet convinced or anywhere near ready. > > But I do support your effort to point out to The Vendor that it is important to > get OpenVMS working properly in the Enterprise. It's a lovely idea, but some factors which are probably obvious to most potential supporters are being (deliberately?) ignored here? There is a market in the SME world for cost-effective reliable non- Windows solutions, and there is a community of folks already out there servicing that market and demonstrating that there is a bit of money to be made (maybe not much). It is, as I'm sure many folks know, based on the Linux community. Whether Linux is "as good as" VMS may not be relevant, so long as Linux and Linux-based apps and Linux-skilled people is/are "good enough" for a sufficient number of customers. Anyway, let's assume for the moment that some folks (end users and their suppliers) might be interested in looking at VMS as a platform for particular applications. What might motivate them to look at VMS, and what obstacles might be in their way? Anybody want to think about why an application vendor in the SME market might want to stay exclusively VMS, or why their app might alternatively end up on a vendor-independent platform? If it's on a vendor-independent platform *as well* as on VMS, what motivations and obstacles relate to a particular customer choosing VMS? Well the usual elephant in the room is of course the VMS hardware. Linux likely runs on whatever the customer or their supplier already has or might possibly want, VMS runs on "industry standard 64bit" Itanium. The customer using x86/64 has pretty much complete investment protection. Their Linux-based supplier can tinker with Linuxes at zero cost in a familiar environment while evaluating and supporting distros and packages and doing whatever else SME suppliers do, without wasting any money or time on a diferent and possibly useless (for their purposes) hardware and software platform. What can the VMS-centric potential SME supplier do to compete against that (apart from petition their vendor to port VMS to Proliant/AMD64, to cut out *some* of the current obstacles)? Once you get that far into the analysis, I'm not sure there's much point continuing, but 'cos I like VMS let's look at changing the game slightly. Perhaps there's scope to to move the game to "software as a remotely delivered service", and divorce the end user from the underlying platform physically and logically as far as possible, in order to deliver business benefits to end user and supplier? Mind you, I'm not sure the market in general is quite ready to reincarnate 1970-80s bureau services, even though that's exactly what *some* organisations are doing (including the UK chain of hire shops I mentioned in a post a few hours ago - who were *replacing* centralised VMS and green screens with centralised Linux on genuine industry standard servers, with Linux Terminal Server out in the shops). Remote service delivery is what MS and Google (and Salesforce.com and ...) have been talking up for a year or 3. Do they see the need for VMS? Would VMS offer them any benefits (and if so, why aren't they using it already)? Meanwhile, in the real world, www.desktopondemand.com (a remotely delivered Linux desktop service, although not SME-focused) is about to close, despite being technically elegant, because in the real world the gain of having zero system admin hassle in-house is outweighed by the pain of having no sound and no streaming and (worst of all?) NO easy PRINTING. Printing was a big hassle for the systems house in the hire shop deal too, and has long been a nuisance in the "thin client" world. How's VMS with printing on industry standard (bargain basement) printers these days? SMEs like their printers, and they're more likely to be direct-attached Deskjet-class than Ricoh/Xerox/whatever networked corporate multifunction boxes. Not sure this one is going anywhere, without at least one big change in the HP picture. Make that change, and it's perhaps a different story. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 13:19:58 -0400 From: JF Mezei Subject: Re: OpenVMS for Small and Medium Businesses? Message-ID: <4852adaa$0$7292$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com> Why would anyone want to bet their SMB software development on an OS whose owner has repeatedly sent very clear messages that the OS is to be relegated to high end niche low volume computing and even accepts that one of the last major vendor widthdraw ? If VMS management and/or HP want SMB software developers to port to VMS, they must first start to advertise VMS as a viable SMB solution. OOOPS, nearly forgot... HP doesn't want to market/advertise VMS to a wide audience. It just wants to send messages to the remaining installed base. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 13:47:09 -0400 From: "Ken Robinson" Subject: Re: OpenVMS for Small and Medium Businesses? Message-ID: <7dd80f60806131047m4d7a6d94o8d835f7e10490b5f@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 1:19 PM, JF Mezei wrote: > > OOOPS, nearly forgot... HP doesn't want to market/advertise VMS to a > wide audience. It just wants to send messages to the remaining installed > base. If that were really the case, how to do you explain the job ad from HP I posted the other day that's look for an "OpenVMS Go-To-Market Program Manager/Evangelist/Trainer"? Ken ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 04:41:34 -0700 (PDT) From: johnwallace4@gmail.com Subject: OT?: VMS, realtime, VAXELN, QNX, VxWorks (and a little marketing) Message-ID: <1f7d70ad-2a4c-4589-a4b0-5a454b48a668@m36g2000hse.googlegroups.com> On Jun 13, 3:05 am, Roger Ivie wrote: > On 2008-06-12, John Smith wrote: > > > We would have preferred to use the ELN variant of VMS but as I recall, it > > was not available on Alpha. > > ELN was not a variant of VMS. It was actually quite similar to QNX at > the "I've glanced through a handful of manuals for each" level. > -- > roger ivie > ri...@ridgenet.net VAXELN was indeed not a variant of VMS but did a good job of being comfortable for VMS developers. The later development tools were the familiar VMS tools (common language environment enabled use of Ada, C, Fortran, Macro, Pascal, standard VMS librarian and linker, standard VMS debugger) and the run time environment had a selection of features intended to help VMS-centric developers feel comfortable (DECnet, ODS disk layout, some RMS compatibility(?), some VMS system services and RTL routines were available, etc). There was even an RdB-compatible API if you wanted to pay for it (I've heard that the RdB/ELN code lived on under another name?) VAXELN allowed designers and developers to concentrate on system level design and development matters rather than the tedious unproductive low level OS stuff which most of the RT kernels then required. It had processes and threads (by different names) long before they were trendy, and location-independent messaging long before it was trendy. With VAXELN, you could, if you wished, have an application suite developed and largely tested and supported on native VMS before being deployed to the target(s). Or, with the same tools, do the testing and support in the target. VAXELN wasn't VMS though, because (for example) it didn't do demand paged virtual memory - if it didn't fit, tough, no overlays (but you could dynamically load programs from file system). I'm not sure VAXELN was all that similar to QNX at a non-trivial level, or indeed to any other commercially available RTOS I've ever seen. QNX was impressive in its day, but I'm not sure how relevant it is today. If you think comp.os.vms is quiet, check out comp.os.qnx (compare with, for example. comp.os.vxworks - may not be the best metric, but it's one). When Alpha came along, the powers that be in DEC decided that there was no business case for a compatible VAXELN successor on Alpha, and instead decided to address the software side of the embedded/RT market by arranging a one-time-buy of the rights to a commercial real time OS, VxWorks (gross oversimplification, but...). They then went on to implement a 64bit VxWorks which was incompatible in various inconvenient ways with the mainstream VxWorks: hosted only on OSF/1, different commercial Ts+Cs than the mainstream VxWorks, sold through channels perceived as competing with mainstream VxWorks. There was allegedly a thin "VAXELN API compatibility" layer, which is a bit like putting a basic C runtime on VMS and calling it a "Unix compatibility" layer - life don't work that way, your apps need different designs, and your device drivers aren't the same, your filesystems aren't the same... While this was going on, a small fortune was being spent in the DEC E+RT group on early development of a revolutionary distributed realtime OS which never came to market... I'm not aware of anyone in the UK who actually bought and deployed VxWorks for Alpha. I know of plenty people in the UK who bought and deployed VAXELN. Some of the folks I'm aware of who looked at VxWorks for Alpha actually ended up using DEC OSF/1, Tru64, whatever, which eventually had really quite respectable real-time capabilities (by V4,iirc) and was technically a quite respectable Unix too. I wonder what happened to it... Maybe Tru64 wasn't applicable to the "embedded" market, but there's sometimes a difference between "embedded" and "real-time" (VMS can do real-time, but it's not what you'd normally call "embedded"). I see Suse now offers a real-time variant of their Linux but it's a bit more expensive than their usual product so I haven't looked into it (yet). 2p John ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 09:16:19 GMT From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jan-Erik_S=F6derholm?= Subject: PCL and PDF support in DCPS. Message-ID: Hi. In a thread some month ago, I seems to remember that PCL was menthioned as a possible addition to PS as supported printer language for DCPS. Or was it maybe direct printing of PDF documents ? Anyway, both these fields are intersting... :-) Jan-Erik. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 10:11:19 -0400 From: Paul Anderson Subject: Re: PCL and PDF support in DCPS. Message-ID: In article , Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote: > In a thread some month ago, I seems to remember that PCL was > menthioned as a possible addition to PS as supported printer language > for DCPS. DCPS will happily print your PCL files but requires a PostScript printer since all the printer control and output formatting is done in PostScript. Since PostScript printers are pretty cheap these days, I can't imagine how rewriting DCPS to print to low-end PCL printers would be worth the effort. > Or was it maybe direct printing of PDF documents ? That's an oft-requested feature. There are three ways I can think of to implement this: 1. Create a PDF-to-PostScript translator in the same manner as the existing DCPS translators. This would let you print PDF files just like PostScript files, to any printer that works with DCPS. 2. Let customers "roll their own" method to convert a file from PDF to PostScript and have DCPS call that procedure. Ghostscript could be used here. This solution is less elegant and more error-prone. 3. Allow DCPS to simply send a PDF file to printers that can print them directly. This limits you to using printers so equipped and does not allow for selecting printer features or DCPS formatting options. > Anyway, both these fields are intersting... :-) And we'd be happy to hear comments about how the PDF printing should be implemented. The feature has been on our to-do list for quite a while but is not scheduled for any future release. Paul -- Paul Anderson OpenVMS Engineering Hewlett-Packard Company ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:53:19 +0000 (UTC) From: david20@alpha2.mdx.ac.uk Subject: Re: PCL and PDF support in DCPS. Message-ID: In article , Paul Anderson writes: >In article , > Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote: > >> In a thread some month ago, I seems to remember that PCL was >> menthioned as a possible addition to PS as supported printer language >> for DCPS. > >DCPS will happily print your PCL files but requires a PostScript printer >since all the printer control and output formatting is done in >PostScript. Since PostScript printers are pretty cheap these days, I >can't imagine how rewriting DCPS to print to low-end PCL printers would >be worth the effort. > It appears that Crawford Technologies disagree with you see http://www.crawfordtech.com/postscript_to_pcl_conversion.htm "This conversion process provides a smooth migration path for Postscript printer clients who want to move their applications to PCL printers without making costly application and architecture changes. PRO PS to PCL is a software product for Windows and Unix that interprets standard Postscript language print streams and resources and transforms them into PCL. This allows organizations to combine the advantages of the industry standard Postscript language with the low page cost, high quality and features of PCL printers. " Unfortunately not available for VMS. David Webb Security team leader CCSS Middlesex University >> Or was it maybe direct printing of PDF documents ? > >That's an oft-requested feature. There are three ways I can think of to >implement this: > > 1. Create a PDF-to-PostScript translator in the same manner as the > existing DCPS translators. This would let you print PDF files > just like PostScript files, to any printer that works with DCPS. > > 2. Let customers "roll their own" method to convert a file from PDF > to PostScript and have DCPS call that procedure. Ghostscript > could be used here. This solution is less elegant and more > error-prone. > > 3. Allow DCPS to simply send a PDF file to printers that can print > them directly. This limits you to using printers so equipped and > does not allow for selecting printer features or DCPS formatting > options. > >> Anyway, both these fields are intersting... :-) > >And we'd be happy to hear comments about how the PDF printing should be >implemented. The feature has been on our to-do list for quite a while >but is not scheduled for any future release. > >Paul > >-- > Paul Anderson > OpenVMS Engineering > Hewlett-Packard Company ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:42:10 -0400 From: Paul Anderson Subject: Re: PCL and PDF support in DCPS. Message-ID: In article , david20@alpha2.mdx.ac.uk wrote: > It appears that Crawford Technologies disagree with you see > > http://www.crawfordtech.com/postscript_to_pcl_conversion.htm > > "This conversion process provides a smooth migration path for > Postscript printer clients who want to move their applications to PCL > printers without making costly application and architecture changes. > > PRO PS to PCL is a software product for Windows and Unix that > interprets standard Postscript language print streams and resources > and transforms them into PCL. This allows organizations to combine > the advantages of the industry standard Postscript language with the > low page cost, high quality and features of PCL printers. But there's a difference between re-writing DCPS to be able to talk to PCL printers and using a product that converts the print job after the fact to PCL. It looks like an interesting product nonetheless, although as you note it runs on Windows and UNIX only. Paul -- Paul Anderson OpenVMS Engineering Hewlett-Packard Company ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:31:53 GMT From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jan-Erik_S=F6derholm?= Subject: Re: PCL and PDF support in DCPS. Message-ID: Paul Anderson wrote: > DCPS will happily print your PCL files but requires a PostScript printer > since all the printer control and output formatting is done in > PostScript. Since PostScript printers are pretty cheap these days, I > can't imagine how rewriting DCPS to print to low-end PCL printers would > be worth the effort. The actual case that triggered my question was a customer where thay have a Xerox Workcenter 232 printer. That one comes standard with PS in the US, but only with PCL in Europe. Maybe it's upgradeable, I don't know... > >> Or was it maybe direct printing of PDF documents ? > > > And we'd be happy to hear comments about how the PDF printing should be > implemented. A DCPS-only solution is of course easier to install and manage. But this isn't a current need at my custemers site. Jan-Erik. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 04:16:16 -0700 (PDT) From: Neil Rieck Subject: Re: TCPware 5.8 and MIME Message-ID: <35a15c82-4ca9-40fc-9fa8-4a75447e72d5@z66g2000hsc.googlegroups.com> On Jun 12, 3:21=A0pm, Neil Rieck wrote: > Folks, > > I just installed TCPware 5.8 and discovered that the good folks at PSC > have finally fixed the MIME attachment problem. > > $!=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D > $! title =A0: mime_hack.com > $! author : Neil Rieck > $! created: 2008-06-12 > $!=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D > $! > $ say :=3D write sys$output > $! > $! =A0 =A0 =A0method #1 (works as-is with TCPware 5.8) > $! > $ say "mailing test #1" > $ mail/subj=3D"mime test 1"/for/type=3D1 SCR-2008H1.zip > "neil.ri...@bell.ca" > $! > $ say "building MIME file" > $ wait 0:00:01 > $ MIME =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0= ! start the MIME application > new/noedit neil.mime =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0! create a new= mime document > add/encod=3Dbase64 SCR-2008H1.zip =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 ! > save =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 = =A0! save mime document > exit =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 = =A0! prompt (leave mime) > $! > $! =A0 =A0 =A0method #2 (works with new TCPware 5.8 logical) > $! > $ say "mailing test #2" > $ def tcpware_smtp_allow_mime_send y =A0 =A0! we want new functionality > $ mail/subj=3D"mime test 2" neil.mime "neil.ri...@bell.ca" > $ say "adios" > > Neil Rieck > Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/ The previous example assumes that this definition has been made somewhere else (like SYS$MANAGER:SYLOGIN.COM) $MIME :=3D=3D $SYS$SYSTEM:MIME.EXE NSR ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 07:52:59 -0400 From: "Richard B. Gilbert" Subject: Re: Universal healthcare in England failing - boy dies ! Message-ID: <8e2dnYaS9oeJ_c_VnZ2dnUVZ_qzinZ2d@comcast.com> DrSlinky wrote: > ultradwc@gmail.com wrote: >> On Jun 12, 1:33 pm, "David Turner, Island Computers" >> wrote: >>> Right >>> And noone ever dies in the USA from "neglect" in the hospitals. >>> >>> -- >>> David B Turner >>> >>> ============================================= >>> >>> Island Computers US Corp >>> PO Box 86 >>> Tybee GA 31328 >>> >>> Toll Free: 1-877 636 4332 x201, Mobile x251 >>> Email: dtur...@islandco.com >>> International & Local: (001)- 404-806-7749 >>> Fax: 912 786 8505 >>> Web:www.islandco.com >>> >>> ============================================= >>> wrote in message >>> >>> news:bc68f831-339d-4173-a0f7-e48fa8f92e99@d62g2000hsf.googlegroups.com... >>> >>> >>>> here is a glance of things to come if Hillary or Obama implement >>>> their healthcare plan ... the bbc did not report it but a teen died >>>> while waiting on an ambulance that was setting at the hospital >>>> with a patient inside because the hospitals were full and did not >>>> want to violate a government mandate of a 4 hour must treat law. >>>> Canada people coming here ... England people that have the money >>>> flying to India to have surgery ... >>>> don't worry, those rich liberal Harvard grads will be able to afford >>>> it while those they claim to want to help will be dying waiting for >>>> an ambulance ... >>>> that what socialism does, it ruins a country ... >>>> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7249514.stm >> >> at least they die in a hospital and not in an ambulance ... > > Yes, the die in the hospital waiting room, filling out page after page > of insurance forms. My experience, fortunately limited, suggests that patients are seen in order of apparent severity. If you walk in, dripping sweat, white as a sheet, and complaining of chest pains, you will be wired up to an EKG in about sixty seconds. If, OTOH, you walk in complaining of seeing "blue flashes" in your left eye, you may sit around for hours before being seen. It was a "vitreous detachment", alarming to the patient but harmless. ------------------------------ Date: 13 Jun 2008 13:40:08 GMT From: VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG Subject: Re: Universal healthcare in England failing - boy dies ! Message-ID: <485278b8$0$4997$607ed4bc@cv.net> In article <8e2dnYaS9oeJ_c_VnZ2dnUVZ_qzinZ2d@comcast.com>, "Richard B. Gilbert" writes: >{...snip...} >My experience, fortunately limited, suggests that patients are seen in >order of apparent severity. If you walk in, dripping sweat, white as a >sheet, and complaining of chest pains, you will be wired up to an EKG in >about sixty seconds. I haven't had medical insurance since I worked for DREN/ET&DL. I've not had any issues when I faced a similar situation... twice. >If, OTOH, you walk in complaining of seeing "blue flashes" in your left >eye, you may sit around for hours before being seen. It was a "vitreous >detachment", alarming to the patient but harmless. I was hit in the head by a paving brick (don't ask) which left a rather nasty gash in my scalp. I walked into the ER with a huge wad of rather ensanguine paper toweling. I was asked what happened and I said I was hit in the head with a paver. I was immediately rushed in to the ER for several staples. Now I know what it feels like to be a stack of reports. I made the mistake telling them I was on 'rat poison' (Coumadin/Warfarin) and I was then treated to a CAT scan for inter-cranial internal hemorrag- ing. Oh, the bills for that and the vitamin K shots were more stupefying than the hit with the brick. I save the ER money now and buy super glue for use with future severe lacerations like one I recently experienced on my foot. Tube of super glue -- $2.00 ER visit, easily $2K+. -- 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: 13 Jun 2008 11:26:45 GMT From: VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG Subject: Re: Weendoze for a VMS bigot Message-ID: <48525975$0$7344$607ed4bc@cv.net> In article , BEGINcornelius@decuserve.orgEND (George Cornelius) writes: >In article <485156be$0$5016$607ed4bc@cv.net>, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG writes: >> In article <8UwMP66s2mc8@eisner.encompasserve.org>, BEGINcornelius@decuserve.orgEND (George Cornelius) writes: >>>I think from reading the thread up to this point that you did get cacls >>>to work, although after the dpm's post I am not sure. >> >> It is what I used. Seeing as there's no such thing as a real 'HELP' command > >HELP CACLS should at least tell you something. Not to mention >CACLS /? . > >> under Weendoze nor anything akin to the unixy 'apropos', finding a command to >> use in Weendoze is virtually impossible. ...and 'cacls', WTF is that? Hens >> in the twinkie and coke vending machine rooms at the Redmond Academy of Soft- >> ware Neophytes Emitting Substandard Often Flawed Technology inspiring command >> verbs? > >RASNESOFT? I shouldn't be typing whilst being harried by my PITA to rush her off to her weekly PO meeting... Miscreant Idiot Coding Rejects Outputting Specious Often Flawed Technology Redmond Academy of Teenaged Software Neophytes Emitting Substandard Technology -- 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: 13 Jun 2008 11:31:49 GMT From: VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG Subject: Re: Weendoze for a VMS bigot Message-ID: <48525aa5$0$7344$607ed4bc@cv.net> In article , BEGINcornelius@decuserve.orgEND (George Cornelius) writes: >{...snip...} >Because I am a command line bigot? I see nothing wrong with that. ;) >If it can't be done from a command line, is it worth doing at all? Perhaps not... especially if you can't gain access to the GUI screen. >Actually, I was trying to learn something when I worked on this problem, >since it looked as if someone had created a file which Administrator >could not delete. Once my coworker returned from vacation, I knew he >could clean up the files, but I wanted to know what tools were available >to me on my own laptop. > >My problem with gui's is that the result is not scriptable. And it can >take three pages of screen prints if you want to record how you did it >for future reference or for someone else's use. Yup. Which is by the Cygwin thing is so useful now that I've installed many more of the packages components. If there was only a decent script language and CLI for Weendoze but Billzebub is aiming for the game play- ing n00bs and dw33bs and not for the real work market despite where it's being used. -- 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: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:50:38 +0000 (UTC) From: david20@alpha2.mdx.ac.uk Subject: Re: Weendoze for a VMS bigot Message-ID: In article <48525aa5$0$7344$607ed4bc@cv.net>, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG writes: >In article , BEGINcornelius@decuserve.orgEND (George Cornelius) writes: >>{...snip...} >>Because I am a command line bigot? > >I see nothing wrong with that. ;) > > > If there was only a decent script >language and CLI for Weendoze but Billzebub is aiming for the game play- >ing n00bs and dw33bs and not for the real work market despite where it's >being used. > Windows PowerShell see http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/powershell/default.mspx available for Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista ( and Windows 2008 evaluation ) and for the FAQ http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/powershell-faq.aspx David Webb Security team leader CCSS Middlesex University >-- >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: 13 Jun 2008 13:14:04 GMT From: VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG Subject: Re: Weendoze for a VMS bigot Message-ID: <4852729c$0$4997$607ed4bc@cv.net> In article , david20@alpha2.mdx.ac.uk writes: >In article <48525aa5$0$7344$607ed4bc@cv.net>, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG writes: >>In article , BEGINcornelius@decuserve.orgEND (George Cornelius) writes: >>>{...snip...} >>>Because I am a command line bigot? >> >>I see nothing wrong with that. ;) >> >> >> If there was only a decent script >>language and CLI for Weendoze but Billzebub is aiming for the game play- >>ing n00bs and dw33bs and not for the real work market despite where it's >>being used. >> > >Windows PowerShell see > >http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/powershell/default.mspx > >available for Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista >( and Windows 2008 evaluation ) > >and for the FAQ > >http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/powershell-faq.aspx I'm happy now with the Cygwin as it is unixy -- something I'm familiar with and know. It's nice to see that M$ has finally seen the light in its errant ways though. -- 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: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:16:57 +0200 From: joukj Subject: where is S.Schweda's OpenVMS-ports web-site? Message-ID: Hi All, Today I tried to get some of the softwere Steven Schweda ported to OpenVMS. Howver, the usual link http://antinode.org/dec/sw/bzip2.html gave me an "angry alligator" telling me the page does not exist. Where can Stenn's stuff been found? Jouk ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:38:44 +0200 From: "Martin Vorlaender" Subject: Re: where is S.Schweda's OpenVMS-ports web-site? Message-ID: joukj wrote: > Today I tried to get some of the softwere Steven Schweda ported to > OpenVMS. Howver, the usual link > http://antinode.org/dec/sw/bzip2.html > gave me an "angry alligator" telling me the page does not exist. > Where can Stenn's stuff been found? http://antinode.info/dec/sw/bzip2.html cu, Martin -- One OS to rule them all | Martin Vorlaender | OpenVMS rules! One OS to find them | work: mv@pdv-systeme.de One OS to bring them all | http://vms.pdv-systeme.de/users/martinv/ And in the Darkness bind them.| home: martin.vorlaender@t-online.de ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:48:52 -0500 (CDT) From: sms@antinode.info (Steven M. Schweda) Subject: where is S.Schweda's OpenVMS-ports web-site? Message-ID: <08061311485249_20200492@antinode.info> From: joukj > Today I tried to get some of the softwere Steven Schweda ported to > OpenVMS. Howver, the usual link > http://antinode.org/dec/sw/bzip2.html > gave me an "angry alligator" telling me the page does not exist. > Where can Stenn's stuff been found? From: "Martin Vorlaender" > http://antinode.info/dec/sw/bzip2.html Annoying domain registration problems. Everything's at antinode.info now. Search engines should be figuring it out soon. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Steven M. Schweda sms@antinode-info 382 South Warwick Street (+1) 651-699-9818 Saint Paul MN 55105-2547 ------------------------------ End of INFO-VAX 2008.329 ************************