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From: djb@gatech.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.followup
Subject: Re: IBM == Dinosaurs ?
Message-ID: <4201@gatech.CSNET>
Date: Tue, 29-Jul-86 23:09:01 EDT
Article-I.D.: gatech.4201
Posted: Tue Jul 29 23:09:01 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 31-Jul-86 00:20:46 EDT
References: <6340MW9@PS> <607@bcsaic.UUCP> <653@polaris.UUCP> <14983@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: djb@gatech.UUCP (David J. Buechner)
Distribution: na
Organization: School of Information and Computer Science, Georgia Tech, Atlanta
Lines: 32

In article <14983@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Matthew P. Wiener) writes:
>In article <653@polaris.UUCP> herbie@polaris.UUCP (Herb Chong) writes:
>>if OS/360 is a dinosaur based purely on age then unix isn't far behind.
>
>OS/360 is called a dinosaur because it's an IBM product, so presumably
>large and clumsy and headed to extinction.

*sigh*  Why must some people base all of their opinions on such strange
reasoning as "it's an IBM product, therefore.....".

VM has some features that have been pointed out that *no* other system has.
The ability to run it under itself has all kind of uses.  For instance I am
currently running a new release of VM under the old release to ease our 
migration to the new release.  Makes things a lot easier than I've seen on any
other system where you do the old "put it up and hope things don't break" 
routine!  It is also fairly difficult to conceive of VM trashing people's files
without there having been a fairly comprehensive failure of the I/O gear
involved.  For one thing VM doesn't even mess with the file structure, it just
helps to transfer big blocks of data to/from the disk to memory where another
OS (running in the virtual machine) interprets it.

Thanks Herb and Kenneth, your rational answers to some of all this have been
very refreshing!

---------------------------------
David Buechner
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