Well, now, Roger,

Over a hundred years ago--well over 100 years ago, when the typewriter was
introduced, it had the QWERTY layout, and the reason was quite pragmatic:
It helped to keep the keys from jamming up in those manual typewriters.

Dvorak patented his keyboard layout in 1932--it was (arguably) faster and
more efficient: http://www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/

But in spite of the fact that it was better, it never really caught on
[mostly because of marketing and an entrenched product].

I would submit to you that the same is probably going to be true of IA64
and there are lots of reasons for that: For one thing, businesses and
individuals are getting really tired of updating their PCs every 18 months
and would like for their hardware and software to somewhere near pay for
itself [an admittedly impossible task]; for another, the xxx86 is really
entrenched in all sorts of ways--this is not to mention that the article
referenced seems to indicate that Intel itself [with those 90 engineers
from HP last year] is going to make certain their own designs for IA64 is
going to go the way of the Dodo Bird.

For myself, I like the IBM G5 processors which accept instruction bit
streams to define the object codes: That would seem to be the wave of the
future--want a new instruction set? Just get a new CD-ROM.

That doesn't work well for either Intel or AMD, for IBM undoubtedly has the
patents and neither Intel or AMD could make much money off it.

You have to know that I do consider you ahead of your time--and have
thought so since the mid 1980s when you brought up questions about Object
Oriented Cobol in an HP3000 meeting.

Nevertheless, even the best ideas often die because there are so many
greedy entrenched vendors out there--ones who aren't very good at telling
the truth, but ARE good at deception.

I guess that sooner or later the HP3000 would have to die [the year 2027
springs to mind], even if MPE i/X were to be ported to IA64--something new
is bound to come along, and manufacturing proprietary CPUs is RISCy
business.

And it isn't clear that now Object Oriented COBOL is available, that it
offers that much advantage either.

It might be well now for me to consider sending my cat to military school;
he's 17 years old now, and the discipline will probably do him good.

No, wait! I think it's too late! And it makes no sense! Just like....

* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *