We're all doomed.

[jsbowden]

All I want to do is patch a Sun. It has Platinum level support on it. Not that I should have to pay extra for Sun to fix their goddamned bugs, but hey, the only company out there that gives you free fixes is MS, but that's crazy, you can't make money selling your OS as a commodity and fixing it for free! It'll never catch on, we can ignore it. (We don't need Platinum support for patches, we could get away with cheaper level support, but the fact that I need a support contract at all for bug fixes still just pisses me off. The software is far more likely to fuck up than the hardware).

Just for fun, let's make the process arcane, and so complex that the only way to do it without turning your machine into an inert bunch of circuits is to use our tool, which is written in the slowest language we have available! (If you don't believe me, patch your Solaris box by hand. I DARE you.)

SGI integrate the patches into inst, which you use to install the OS, third party software, pretty much everything in fact. It does nifty things like track dependencies, root out conflicts, check for available drive space (including temporary space used in the install, which it differentiates from the final space difference post install, what a concept!), and warns you if you're about to blow your own head off. It even has a nice X GUI front end (swmgr) if you prefer. Not sun. We have this nifty tool, written in Java, which can't even figure out if you've got enough space available before patching, because we don't calculate the temp space needed during the process (I've had this happen, start patching...die when / fills up; quick and easy way to kill your Solaris box). IF it works, which it doesn't more often than not. It doesn't report errors to anything but syslog, and the errors are often incomprehensible:

Mar 4 08:06:09 wally root: Fri Mar 04 08:06:09 EST 2005(ERROR) => com.sun.patchpro.server.ServerPatchServiceProvider@d8d237 <=Failed to validate the digital signature(s). for: /var/spool/pkg/patchpro//114602-04.jar: The specific Jar file is not readable.

Of course the jar file isn't readable you piece of shit, you can't expect Sun to keep patches for Solaris 9 available when 10 just shipped, because we'd all be stupid to keep our nice and stable production servers running a known and tested platform while we wait for the horror stories for 10 to start popping up, so we know what nightmares we can expect once we migrate.

It's not a shock that Windows is taking over data centers, despite doing half the work with twice the hardware required by its Unix competition.

Comments

[carpone.livejournal.com]

Linux for the win.

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

Yes, because I want an even worse environment.

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

When evil wins, we all win. It's scary when MS products actually work, but sometimes they do. Bill's evil impulses are at war with his desire to own every dollar. He seeks to create software that embodies his own inner evils, but at the same time, he wants people to buy it. In the end, getting people to buy product may win out over evil idealism, and Bill will be dragged out into the light.

[corruptedjasper.livejournal.com]

it's actually pretty clear that Bill's desire isn't to own every dollar, but merely to have MS bring in every dollar to him so he can then decide what to spend it on. Viz the Bill and Melinda Gates trust which is already the largest charity around, much more so the Hewlett fund, Packard fund, Getty fund, etc, and isn't even the only charity he's spending billions on.

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

Good PR is essential. If you love something (like a dollar), set it free. If you dominate the market completely, it will come back to you, eventually. And if not, there's always henchmen with lasers on their heads.

[corruptedjasper.livejournal.com]

I don't think he gets that much better publicity for 20 billion than for 5 billion, though. Not 15 billion dollar's worth, anyway.