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Few Quickies 41

Posted by HeUnique from the news-news-news dept.
ZDNN reports that Larry Ellison doesn't want to pay the $1 million bet when he challange MS last comdex regarding Oracle 8 (each company accused the other of misrepresentations), and if you're looking for a job, then Apple is looking for Linux Technology Manager (Credit goes to Linux Today)
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Few Quickies More

Few Quickies

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  • There's a standards body for benchmarks of transaction processing? I mean, there needs to be a standard for the speed at which transactions are made?? Seriously, wouldn't you rather hear something like Transaction Security Council or something along those lines??

    Hopefully this isn't another government funded standards council we have no need for...
  • Were I Larry Ellison, I think I'd triple-check
    the video tape that MS sent me -- make sure those
    icons don't hop around or vanish.

    Anyone else notice how long this has taken? The MS
    video editing crew must be backed up these days.

    ----

  • >I don't really think that we need to see the proof of it.

    Yeah, when I have a contest for a million bucks, I'll be sure and hand it out to whoever says they won. I mean, they could have, right?

    Not only did Microsoft not publish a benchmark for the whole query, they routinely lie, cheat, and otherwise manipulate results.

    I wouldn't trust a Microserf if they were pinned down by a UE10K. Which, incidentally, ought to clobber an 8-way Xeon without any trouble.

    Methinks Microsoft is (as usual) heavily constipated.

  • That link almost works. Slashdot seems to be inserting a space so the "_pagesNEW" turns into "_pa gesNEW".


    --Phil (Rob, you reading this?)
  • But I think it would be really interesting to see exactly how much slower it was. If it was 100 times slower it would still be a major embarassment to Microsoft. I thought this was the one of the main points of the bet - so that it would be published exactly how much slower it is and Ellison could revel in the wide margin even if it is below 100.
  • So where's the benchmark of Microsoft coming close to Oracle's performance? Weren't they supposed to publish it to get the reward? Anybody have a URL or is a lack of publication why Ellison isn't forking over the cash? The article was kind of bare.

  • I suspect that's the real point of the bet. MS publishing a side by side comparison with Oracle would be worth a million dollars to Oracle.

  • Funny (Score:1)

    by tak* ( 1121 )
    Well, Apple sells hardware. I seriously doubt they give a damn what OS you put on them as long as you buy the hardware from them...

    As far as the CPU issue goes, they don't mean the G3 processor it self. Many companies use the acronymn 'CPU' to mean the PC it self. The whole unit itself. I'm sure they didn't just mean the processor.
    It's far easier to forgive your enemy after you get even with him.
  • Post a job opening for a Linux user on Slashdot. At least they're opening up more than the low level software testing positions that Linux users at Apple are known to get stuck in.
  • Can anybody with the same equipment and software reproduce the test? I wouldn't trust M$ but OTOH Ellison shouldn't let his mouth get him in such trouble. Let's get "John Henry" out there and see if he can pound the spikes.
  • I'm still waiting for Stever Ballmer to eat a floppy, as he said he'd do when OS/2 could run Windows apps. That happened ages ago, and I never saw him munching down.

    As far as the money goes, they should both donate $1B or so to the Red Cross or some charity NOT RELATED TO COMPUTERS.
  • I believe companies are allowed to tweek their TPC testing machines in order to get maximum (if unrealistic) performance. So taking a stock Oracle, and a stock Cray isn't necessarilly going to provide the same results that Ellison and Gates got. After all, the whole purpose of this benchmarks is that it gives companies something to put in ad copy.
  • Yup, I'd want to see the published proof in black and white. After all it did specify in the challenge that the benchmark would have to be published.
  • Yes, in the same way as SPEC exists for compute intensive benchmarks.

    No, it isn't government funded. It is funded by the computing industry itself.

    And don't be so bloody parochial. Where would we be without the likes of the IETF and ANSI. I won't even mention ISO, since your own national standards organisations make you froth at the mouth I would hate to think what international ones do.
  • Larry (and Scott McNealy) do this all the time. It drives me nuts because MS will take advantage of their every mistake.
  • Larry (and Scott McNealy) do this all the time. It drives me nuts because MS will take advantage of every mistake they make
  • I can't get the link I copy to work.. so goto this page: Apple Jobs [apple.com] and type in LINUX.
    Stan "Myconid" Brinkerhoff
  • Figured it was something simple like that :) .. it worked fine pasting it into IE.. err.. netscape ;-)
    Stan "Myconid" Brinkerhoff
  • Finding Jobs at apple.. Linux Tech Manager

    I think that is the right area that the link should goto. I think its a good thing(tm) that apple is realizing that their little mac os (-8) isnt the best thing in the world. With them realizing that linux plays a large role in computing, and is also used widly on their boxes, I think that possibly the mac versions of linux / osx could move forward a lot faster giving a lot of enhancements and help the mac version of linux prosper.

    Kinda wish they would clean up that open source license though

    Stan "Myconid" Brinkerhoff

  • Funny (Score:2)

    by Maarten ( 6167 )
    Builds strong internal and external relationships in order to effectively deliver Apple's message to Linux developers and champion their needs and issues within Apple. Works to help Linux developers get seeded with new Apple hardware to guarantee support for our new CPUs.
    to effectively deliver Apple's message to Linux developers? And what could that message be? 'forget linux, it has no future, use OS X'? And since when does Apple make their own CPU's? I seem to recall that the CPU's were never the big problem in porting to Apples hardware! Maarten
  • February 22, 1999

    Oracle Closes Million Dollar Challenge With 13 Leading TPC-D Benchmarks on Oracle8i(tm)


    REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., Feb. 22, 1999--Oracle Corporation today announced another
    leading TPC-D benchmark on Oracle8i(tm) and Sun Enterprise 10000 Server. This is the latest
    of 13 leading benchmark results which improves by 70 percent over the previous world record,
    also held by Oracle8i, and marks the close of the Oracle Million Dollar Challenge. Larry
    Ellison, Chairman and CEO of Oracle, issued the Oracle Million Dollar Challenge at his
    keynote during Fall COMDEX in November last year. The challenge was for Microsoft, or
    anyone else, to make Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 run better than 100 times slower than Oracle8i
    database running a particular industry standard benchmark query. Microsoft did not respond to
    the challenge, which has been posted on Oracle's Web site (http://www.oracle.com/challenge/)
    for the last 3 months.

    "Microsoft has had more than three months to respond to the challenge and we haven't heard a
    word from them," said Jeremy Burton, vice president of Server Marketing at Oracle. "This is
    because SQL Server 7.0 is years behind in data warehousing technology; they have yet to
    publish a single TPC-D result. Any customer considering SQL Server should have serious
    concerns about their failure to demonstrate performance in the critical data warehousing spac
  • I'd make an animation of the two product icons w/ legs, in race. Doubt I'd get the million, but I'd try.
  • Agreed. The people doing these benchmarks should watch the microsoft folks like hawks. It's not as if they've not been known to rig test results. That's probably why he's so reluctant.
    -lx
  • So where's the benchmark of Microsoft coming close to Oracle's performance? Weren't they supposed to publish it to get the reward?

    One would suspect that if Microsoft is reluctant to publish the results that while they might be more than 1/100th as fast, they might not be more than 1/16th as fast, meaning in all reality, it is still a 'win' for Oracle, as Microsoft has stated their solution is 1/16th the cost of the Oracle one. If they don't beat 1/16th the performance (which I believe unlikely given the differences in scaling efficiency between Solaris and NT, and the fact that the Sun Ultra Enterprise 10000 that is used in Oracle's test has 8 times as many processors as any box currently NT runs on, as well as the advantage of being 64 bit and having a considerably better I/O design than anything NT currently runs on.

  • I suspect that's the real point of the bet. MS publishing a side by side comparison with Oracle would be worth a million dollars to Oracle.

    Undoubtedly, what I can't believe is that Microsoft was foolish enough to take the bait. For a company that has the track record they do of making smart marketing decisions, this seems like a serious error in judgement on their part.

  • I agree. I don't believe much of anything Micro$oft has to say, especially after the DOJ fiasco. If they'll falsify testimony in a government court, they'll certainly falsify m something like this!
  • Ellison likes media attention. So when Larry shot his mouth off at Comdex about the challenge to Microsoft I knew he was in for trouble. This is what happens when the world's 2nd largest ego tries to challenge the first. Fork over the cash to charity Ellison, keep your mouth shut and continue to make a good database product.

    Hangtime

  • $1 million dollars (Score:3)

    by Emilio ( 22274 ) on Thursday March 25, 1999 @03:47PM (#1962442)
    I think that they both should give $1 million dollars to charity. It's not like they couldn't afford it.

    I doubt MS would say that giving the money to the charity is not good enough.
  • yeah where is it
  • I seem to recall that the requirements included a full published audited TPC-D result for the full TPC-D test suite. As for the "results" only, seems like regurgitating precomputed results in about one second could be done with Basic on DOS on an old 486. Take a few days (weeks?) to load it though.
  • I think that they both should give $1 million dollars to charity. It's not like they couldn't afford it.

    I doubt MS would say that giving the money to the charity is not good enough.

    Er, actually, I believe that MS has already said that it would do that with the money, if Ellison paid up.

  • Larry can't just focus on scrapping windows -- his goal is the same as Bill's. "Whatever it is I think I see looks like [insert company name here] to me!!!"

    The other thing is cocking off to the media at every opportunity is what got Oracle where they are today and will probably push them where they're going tomorrow. [and now an op-ed] To microsoft's credit, that stupid database is the soundest piece of their technology (release 6.5 actually) that I've ever used, but they sure aren't Oracle.

    Plus, another Ellison quote from the news points out that he doesn't feel he has to smash windows as it will crash down under its own weight with Windows2000. I think the quote was something about MS "should've gone with WindowsCE" instead of clinging to the past.

    "With patience and plenty of saliva,
    the elephant deflowered the mosquito."
  • I don't really think that we need to see the proof of it. After all, Oracle said that it only had to be 100 times as close, so if MS' database was 100 times slower, it would still win, I think think that they might be able to do it..of course it would crash right afterwards.

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