Re: Mainframe & thin-client (was Re: Microsoft good press over Longhorn)

From: Ron Johnson (ron.l.johnson_at_cox.net)
Date: 11/04/03

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    To: Debian-User <debian-user@lists.debian.org>
Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2003 01:19:27 -0600

    On Mon, 2002-11-04 at 00:06, cr wrote:
    > On Tue, 04 Nov 2003 01:15, Ron Johnson wrote:
    > > On Sun, 2002-11-03 at 01:14, cr wrote:
    > > > On Sun, 02 Nov 2003 23:37, Paul Johnson wrote:
    > > > > On Sat, Nov 01, 2003 at 05:13:01PM +0000, Pigeon wrote:
    > > > > > Nah, that was EDIT.COM - before that appeared I used to use the Turbo
    > > > > > C editor to edit text files; I think the guys who wrote EDIT.COM did
    > > > > > too.
    > > > >
    > > > > I remember c:\dos\edit.com fondly as well, probably the best text
    > > > > editor to ever come out of MS. Still doesn't hold a flame to emacs,
    > > > > but hey, it's Microsoft we're talking about here, so what do you
    > > > > expect?
    > > >
    > > > Well, I discovered Edit when our department got a IBM PC with a
    > > > dot-matrix printer. At that time we engineers had to write
    > > > specifications on a mainframe terminal in some 'scripting' language, send
    > > > them off to some queue, phone up Accounts (who owned the mainframe) and
    > > > beg them nicely to run some compiler on it and send it to the Print
    > > > queue, then phone up Printing and tell them it was ours. If we were
    > > > lucky, next day, we'd get the result and (if we'd made no mistakes in our
    > > > scripting!) it would be readable. If not...
    > > >
    > > > Nobody told me about Edit, I found it by accident. But as soon as I saw
    > > > it I recognised The Future. Or, Freedom. I printed off one page to
    > > > prove to myself that it would work, went to the mainframe terminal,
    > > > logged in, typed "Change Password", shut my eyes and typed in random
    > > > letters, locking myself out of the detested mainframe forever. :)
    > > >
    > > > Does anyone wonder why I hate Thin Clients...? ;)
    > >
    > > I hate to use such strong words, but to compare the centralized
    > > control of resources that existed on *old* mainframes with the
    > > centralized control of resources on a thin-client/fat-server and
    > > find any but the most basic similarities is verging on delusion.
    > >
    > > After all, it's no more difficult to have a printer sitting on your
    > > desk, or down the hall with a TC/FS network-based system as it is
    > > when you have stand-alone or fat-client/thin-server system. And
    > > you're still running all the same apps, no matter what.
    >
    > The *major* similarity between mainframes and Thin Clients is, that as a user
    > on a Thin Client, I am stuck with the software and the settings that are
    > installed on the Fat Server (or whatever it's called). Those are *not* the
    > same apps as I choose to run on my old W95 box, I can't install anything of
    > my own on the server. (I already asked that one, and I knew what the answer
    > would be. Mainframe Mentality is creeping back).

    Yes, that's true, and, being An Old Mainframe Guy, who still works
    on host-based systems (OpenVMS), I like the idea of being able to
    tell the user, "No, you can *not* mangle your machine, then bitch
    at me for taking all day to try to fix what you broke, or all day
    and all night recovering the office from a virus/worm/trojan that
    you introduced onto the LAN".

    Also, standardization: with TC/FS, there's no possibility of
    5 different versions of Windows (plus Service Packs), or a half
    dozen versions of kernels and distros floating around the org,
    causing weird incompatibilities.

    > On 'my' (actually the company's) old W95 box, I have Opera, graphics viewers,

    <TOPIC=OFF>
    Blech. Win95? That's so ancient, that, if kernel.org is to
    be believed (www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v1.2/), it's
    release coincides with linux-1.2.13.tar.bz2.
    </TOPIC>

    > Xbasic, a pretty cool screensaver, heaps of other W95 freeware..... They're
    > the only things that make using a Windoze box tolerable, for me. It's about
    > freedom of choice, you know? Fortunately for me, I also have a considerable
    > number of little engineering programs installed which justifies me keeping my
    > old box.

    You run engineering apps in 2003, on a 5-8 year old box? You'd
    be *much* happier with Win2k. Or do your apps not work in Win2k?

    When you work for someone else, you have a lot less freedom of choice
    than at home, or at your own business.

    > Thin Clients might be suitable for copy typists, data entry clerks and Dumb
    > Users. Certainly not for engineers or anybody who's likely to be reading
    > this list. If we thought Microcrap was the greatest we wouldn't be on this
    > list, right?

    Guess what? Thin-clients work *great* on Linux! http://www.ltsp.org

    TC obviously isn't suitable for your tasks, but to say "Does anyone
    wonder why I hate Thin Clients...?" is a very "big" sentence. 

    -- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Ron Johnson, Jr. ron.l.johnson@cox.net
Jefferson, LA USA
"My advice to you is to get married: If you find a good wife, you
will be happy; if not, you will become a philosopher."
Socrates
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