Obsessed? WTF?

[Chris_McKillop1]

Want to know what I’m telling my customers about QSSL? I tell them, “QNX4
was a fantastic product. It is extremely reliable an lightning fast.
Besides you can get old QNX4 licenses all over the place for a song. Yes,
it is true. QNX4 is sealed in stone and they’ll never write so much as a
new device driver for next years latest and greatest hardware. But if you
can find the hardware that runs QNX4 it’s the bomb. QNX6 is still missing
too many features. But worse than that, it is across the board slower in
every measurable way AND QSSL doesn’t seem to care. Instead they come back
and say ‘yes, we know it is slower but it can run on all these different
hardware platforms’.” Well, guess what. Most developers are only
developing for one platform. I have still only successfully installed QNX6
on systems where I could install in on a Windows partition first. I can’t
even get straight answers on how to install QNX6 onto a system that only has
a QNX4 partition.

To install QNX on any system besides a FAT32 based Windows system you boot the
CDROM and install QNX into it’s own partition. The default for QNX6 is
t79 so it co-exists with a side-by-side QNX4 install. It is possible to
fake out a QNX6-in-a-QNX4 install using the same methods that are used in the
Windows install but that is far from an idea manner to run a “real” install.
Simply put the .ifs of choice (qnxbasedma.ifs) in /.altboot and make sure you
have the qnxbase.qfs and qnxroot.qfs (pinch them over the network from a windows
based install) and put them in /boot/fs on your QNX4 disk. One issue you will
hit is the need to build your own qnxbasedma.ifs that is small enough to
boot with the old QNX4 partition loader, just take out the devb’s you don’t
need. Once you have this working you can easily burn a CD with a script to
do it all, and in the “old days” this was how you installed Neutrino.


As for “Across The Board slower in any measurable way”, would you care to post
your test code, test hardware and results under QNX4 and QNX6? The numbers
I have seen show a small increase in the context swtich time on an idle system
but a far more consistent time under load. The only other place I know enough
numbers wise to comment on is networking speed, and QNX6 is faster then
QNX4. There is no reason for things to be slower and I (along with most of
R&D) would be happy to have explict test cases that are slower (idependant of
hardware) so that we can identify the bottlenecks and remove them.

thanks,
chris

–
Chris McKillop <cdm@qnx.com> “The faster I go, the behinder I get.”
Software Engineer, QSSL – Lewis Carroll –
http://qnx.wox.org/

[Armin_Steinhoff1]

camz@passageway.com wrote:

Mario Charest <> goto@nothingness.com> > wrote:
We see a campaign that immediately seems offbase, and we are concerned.

Please Martin, don’t use the word we. English isnt’ my strength but it seems
to me “we” could/would include me as well.

Of course feel free to correct me if I miss perceived who we is, hihi!

Actually it is the “royal we”, ie. we is meant to represent the developer /
user community in general.

… and why do you believe that your “royal opinion” represent the
opinions of
all developers ??

IMHO … the ‘obsessed’ campain is the first marketing campain I ever
saw from QSSL Low interrupt latency doesn’t sell and doesn’t produce
attention in the OS market.

Armin

[Mario_Charest1]

“Armin Steinhoff” <a-steinhoff@web_.de> wrote in message
news:3CDB7E39.9639A9BB@web_.de…

camz@passageway.com > wrote:

Mario Charest <> goto@nothingness.com> > wrote:
We see a campaign that immediately seems offbase, and we are
concerned.

Please Martin, don’t use the word we. English isnt’ my strength but it
seems
to me “we” could/would include me as well.

Of course feel free to correct me if I miss perceived who we is, hihi!

Actually it is the “royal we”, ie. we is meant to represent the
developer /
user community in general.

… and why do you believe that your “royal opinion” represent the
opinions of
all developers ??

IMHO … the ‘obsessed’ campain is the first marketing campain I ever
saw from QSSL > > Low interrupt latency doesn’t sell and doesn’t produce
attention in the OS market.

Although this perticular ad doesn’t draw my attention or create any kind of
emotionnal response I agree with Armin. Not all brains work the same

Hence I’ll trust the VP team know what they are doing, since I’m in no
position nor have the knowledge to understand it all

Good luck VP Team

Armin

[system]

Anyway, it’s going to run for a while yet, and we’ll be monitoring how

My problem was that you can navigate through http://www.qnxobsessed.com
only by fancy super-duper web browsers that nerds (or management YMMV) use.

(Ask for raw access.log; my outdated browser trace should be obvious)

kabe

[Jutta_Steinhoff1]

Mario Charest wrote:

“Armin Steinhoff” <a-steinhoff@web_.de> wrote in message
news:3CDB7E39.9639A9BB@web_.de…

camz@passageway.com > wrote:

Mario Charest <> goto@nothingness.com> > wrote:
We see a campaign that immediately seems offbase, and we are
and we are concerned.

Please Martin, don’t use the word we. English isnt’ my strength
but it seems to me “we” could/would include me as well.

Of course feel free to correct me if I miss perceived who we is, hihi!

Actually it is the “royal we”, ie. we is meant to represent the
developer / user community in general.

… and why do you believe that your “royal opinion” represent the
opinions of all developers ??

IMHO … the ‘obsessed’ campain is the first marketing campain I ever
ever saw from QSSL > > Low interrupt latency doesn’t sell and doesn’t
produce attention in the OS market.

Although this perticular ad doesn’t draw my attention or create any kind of
emotionnal response I agree with Armin. Not all brains work the same >

Mario, have in mind that there is no reason to attrack insiders like
you … you are going on using QNX whatever adds they have, isn’t it ?

Let’s see what will be the reaction from pot. customers and you can
ask your new customers what they think about. May be it’s even
the add which attracked their attention for QNX?? … in 2 monthes
we should talk about again

Jutta

P.S. if everyone cares about the new adds as you do, so it’s a great
marketing campaign … perhaps they can top it when telling in the
next campaign who had what in his hand… )

[Kris_Warkentin1]

I’m inclined to agree with Igor. My only concern with the site was that
people would not want to fill out personal information to download a
datasheet - I thought it would be politer to ASK for the information rather
than demand it.

As far as the ad campaign goes, I think that the brochures and such look
very slick and much like many of the other types of ads we see from
companies like Microsoft. I’ve noticed a certain arrogance about software
developers where everyone else is perceived as stupid or incompetent. “My
manager is so dumb he doesn’t know a debugger from a compiler hyuk hyuk…”
A lot of us seem to think that we know better than everyone else about
everything. I for one, don’t know any more about marketing than they do
about debugging but I do know that the people we’ve hired are just as expert
in their field as we are in ours. QNX don’t hire no dummies and regardless
of what any of us gear-heads think of the campaign, I’m willing to bet that
they know better than we do and will get good results.

So I would say to all you would be marketers out there, ‘Don’t teach your
grandmother to suck eggs’, and sit back and watch while they get results.
You might just learn something.

cheers,

Kris

“Igor Kovalenko” <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com> wrote in message
news:abemfi$3rd$1@inn.qnx.com…

“Mario Charest” <> goto@nothingness.com> > wrote in message
news:abed74$qjp$> 1@inn.qnx.com> …

For once, I think QNX marketing did a good job. I will agree however that
I
don’t feel like filling goddamned forms just to read some report,
especially
since usefulness of report can only be determined upon reading. And yes,
GET
@#$$^&&%(% DATABASE!

– igor

[Mario_Charest1]

I’ve noticed a certain arrogance about software
developers where everyone else is perceived as stupid or incompetent. “My
manager is so dumb he doesn’t know a debugger from a compiler hyuk
hyuk…”
A lot of us seem to think that we know better than everyone else about
everything. I for one, don’t know any more about marketing than they do
about debugging but I do know that the people we’ve hired are just as
expert
in their field as we are in ours. QNX don’t hire no dummies and
regardless
of what any of us gear-heads think of the campaign, I’m willing to bet
that
they know better than we do and will get good results.

Very well said !!!

[Rennie_Allen2]

Robert Krten wrote:

The “royal we” is meant to represent one person, using “we”, like the Queen,
when she sez “we are not impressed” > > Not “we the British Empire”, but
more like “we the Queen”.

Completely off topic, but I have a tangential interest in this subject.

I had always thought the “royal we” was a reference to the Queen as both
a person and a position (i.e. “We are not amused” meant that the Queen
was neither personally, nor professionally, amused). Does any one know
if this is actually the case, or is the Queen simply batty ?

So, I’ve fallen for more bait and corrected the correction >

Hmmm, where does that put me (wanting an expanded explanation of the
correction of a correction

Rennie

[Mitchell_Schoenbrun]

Previously, Rennie Allen wrote in qdn.public.qnxrtp.advocacy:

I had always thought the “royal we” was a reference to the Queen as both
a person and a position (i.e. “We are not amused” meant that the Queen
was neither personally, nor professionally, amused). Does any one know
if this is actually the case, or is the Queen simply batty ?

Hmmm. I’d be interested too, after hearing about the “royal we” for so
long. It brings into possibility all sorts of new interesting uses.
For example, the CEO of “Enron” could now responsibly say “We are f*#$%'d”.




Mitchell Schoenbrun --------- maschoen@pobox.com

[system]

Rennie Allen <rallen@csical.com> wrote:

Hmmm, where does that put me (wanting an expanded explanation of the
correction of a correction >

We don’t know.

[Robert_Krten1]

camz@passageway.com wrote:

Rennie Allen <> rallen@csical.com> > wrote:
Hmmm, where does that put me (wanting an expanded explanation of the
correction of a correction >

We don’t know.

All it sez in www.m-w.com is:

used by sovereigns; used by writers to keep an impersonal character

Sigh…

–
Robert Krten, PARSE Software Devices +1 613 599 8316.
Realtime Systems Architecture, Books, Video-based and Instructor-led
Training and Consulting at www.parse.com.
Email my initials at parse dot com.

[Alec_Saunders1]

I will echo Bill Caroselli’s issue with re-submitting our information yet
again to QSSL. I’m feeling kinda edgy today so, I’ll be blunt:

GET A F’ING DATABASE AND *USE IT

I have entered my information so may times, I’m getting tired of it.
Please,
create a database, link it to your website, key it off of email address
and
do a match when you want our info again… if you find our email, populate
the
form with our information so all we have to go is click submit/next.

Got it - loud and clear.

And on the DDJ thing – yes, would have liked to have been in it. We
literally missed the date by 1 day. We will be in EDN and ESP though.

–
Alec Saunders (alecs@qnx.com)
VP Marketing, QNX Software Systems Limited

[Ian_Zagorskih1]

<camz@passageway.com> wrote in message news:abp6n9$lqm$1@inn.qnx.com…

Rennie Allen <> rallen@csical.com> > wrote:
Hmmm, where does that put me (wanting an expanded explanation of the
correction of a correction >


We don’t know.

We both as a person and professional ?

// wbr

[Dmitri_Poustovalov1]

“Bill Caroselli (Q-TPS)” <QTPS@EarthLink.net> wrote in message
news:abe8c6$nad$1@inn.qnx.com…

Hi Alec

First, you promised us months ago that QSSL would not insist on all the
personal information every time someone goes to the download page.
Promise
broken - no surprise there.

Personally I’m not afraid of the “nerd” image. I’m a nerd and damn proud
of
it. I want me kids to grow up to be nerds.

But who is this ad campaign aimed at? Not at the nerds! We want to know
the facts. But let’s face it, the facts aren’t on your side lately. Your
ad campaign is aimed at the corporate CEOs that (you think) think of all
of
us that can put a coherent thought together as nerds. Well fine. I
understand that. QSSL needs to advertise to the corporate CEOs. Because
us
nerds are only too aware lately that QSSL has abandoned the software
development community.

If you want to sell product, you have to get us nerds to go to our CEOs
and
say, “We have to get this QNX thing. It works!”

Want to know what I’m telling my customers about QSSL? I tell them, "QNX4
was a fantastic product. It is extremely reliable an lightning fast.
Besides you can get old QNX4 licenses all over the place for a song. Yes,
it is true. QNX4 is sealed in stone and they’ll never write so much as a
new device driver for next years latest and greatest hardware. But if you
can find the hardware that runs QNX4 it’s the bomb. QNX6 is still missing
too many features. But worse than that, it is across the board slower in
every measurable way

Which way? Only number I’ve seen came from Dedicated Systems.
http://www.dedicated-systems.com/Encyc/BuyersGuide/RTOS/evaluations/login.as
p
has a few reports RTOSes including VxWorks5.3/pSOS2/QNX4 report and QNX6
one. Since
testing for both reports was done on the exactly same platform with almost
the same test cases set,
the numbers are quite comparable. I did some home work comparing
VxWorks/pSOS/QNX4/QNX6.
A few things to mention:

• I had known VxWorks was not scalable on complex systems with dozens tasks,
  but it’s even worse
• Suprisingly for me QNX4 outperformed both VxWorks and pSOS in many hard
  real-time aspects, for example in thread switch latency!
• QNX6 was sometimes a little bit better, sometimes a little bit worse than
  QNX4, but QNX6 still outperformed VxWorks.
  For example, accordingly to notes I have, for 128 tasks/threads QNX6 max
  thread switch latency was 2.5 times (sic!) better than VxWork one.

Windows CE/Embedded NT expansion, for example in industrial automation
sector, is remarkable. That kinda explains why WinCE/QNX6 report has been
issued. What I 'd like to see are “VxWorks5.3 vs. QNX 6.x” and “VxWorksAE
vs. QNX6.x” reports.

Cheers,
-Dmitri

AND QSSL doesn’t seem to care. Instead they come back
and say ‘yes, we know it is slower but it can run on all these different
hardware platforms’." Well, guess what. Most developers are only
developing for one platform. I have still only successfully installed
QNX6
on systems where I could install in on a Windows partition first. I can’t
even get straight answers on how to install QNX6 onto a system that only
has
a QNX4 partition.

“Alec Saunders” <> alecs@qnx.com> > wrote in message
news:abe6rc$llk$> 1@nntp.qnx.com> …

Thanks for the pat on the back Kevin.

Let me explain a little bit about the obsessed campaign, guys. First,
good
advertising generates comments, so I take your immediate comments as a
bit
of a compliment >

Second, you should know we didn’t do this in a vacuum. We asked our ad
agency to give us something that was edgy, and that would draw people
in.
They had 5 concepts, including the obsessed concept. We focus group
tested
the concepts, and then chose from the two most popular, of which the
obsessed concept was the winner. Dan loved it, too. Then we went around
QSSL’s offices with a professional photographer and shot pictures of our
own
staff. You should see the one of me > > The person in question is one
of
our developers, and he’s definitely not nerdy. Obsessed with building
great
products for our customers… sure. And that was the concept we were
trying
to push.

Anyway, it’s going to run for a while yet, and we’ll be monitoring how
effective it is pretty closely. And you know, if it doesn’t achieve vs
the
objective metrics we set for it, then we’ll do something else. That’s
the
beauty of advertising – you can measure it, figure out what the ROI is,
and
decide if it’s the right thing to be doing based on hard facts.

Cheers!

Alec.

---

Alec Saunders
VP Marketing, QNX Software

\

[Rennie_Allen2]

Bill Caroselli (Q-TPS) wrote:

First of all I was only comparing QNX4 & QNX6.

Write a utility that reads sequentially through an entire hard drive, QNX4
is faster.
Write a utility that lseek()s and reads backwards through an entire hard
drive, QNX4 is faster.
Compile a project of 100 or more modules averaging 1000 lines each, QNX4 is
faster.
Do a memmove() of a million bytes a thousand times, QNX4 is faster.
Don’t even consider the time it takes to read through a directory and open()
1000 files and close them. QNX4 is faster.

All of these tests were done on three different hardware platforms for both
QNX4 and QNX6.

And not one of these measurements (with the possible exception of the
memmove) has even the slightest bearing on real-time characteristics. If
you perform all of these same tests with QNX4 and Windows 2000, I bet
W2K would trounce QNX4; does that mean W2K would make a better RTOS than
QNX4 ?

Rennie

[Volny_DE_PASCALE]

Wow ! I just LOVE off topic subjects.
I’ve read somewhere taht the habit of saying “we” when a ruler spoke
originated in the days of the triumvirate in Rome (just before the empire,
some 50 years B.C.)
As any member of the triumvirate was supposed to speak for the three of
them, they would never say “I”, but “we”.
Unfortunately I’m unable (yet) to find any serious references for that nice
story.

And by the way, I did love QNX 2.

–

Volny DE PASCALE
EBIM S.A.
ZI Saint-Joseph
FR-04100 MANOSQUE
email volny.de.pascale@ebim.fr
Tel. 33 (0)4 92 72 18 66 - Fax 33 (0)4 92 87 31 86

“Mitchell Schoenbrun” <maschoen@pobox.com> a écrit dans le message news:
Voyager.020513093310.200A@schoenbrun.com…

Previously, Rennie Allen wrote in qdn.public.qnxrtp.advocacy:

I had always thought the “royal we” was a reference to the Queen as both
a person and a position (i.e. “We are not amused” meant that the Queen
was neither personally, nor professionally, amused). Does any one know
if this is actually the case, or is the Queen simply batty ?

Hmmm. I’d be interested too, after hearing about the “royal we” for so
long. It brings into possibility all sorts of new interesting uses.
For example, the CEO of “Enron” could now responsibly say “We are
f*#$%'d”.




Mitchell Schoenbrun --------- > maschoen@pobox.com

[Bill_Caroselli_Q-TPS]

First of all I was only comparing QNX4 & QNX6.

Write a utility that reads sequentially through an entire hard drive, QNX4
is faster.
Write a utility that lseek()s and reads backwards through an entire hard
drive, QNX4 is faster.
Compile a project of 100 or more modules averaging 1000 lines each, QNX4 is
faster.
Do a memmove() of a million bytes a thousand times, QNX4 is faster.
Don’t even consider the time it takes to read through a directory and open()
1000 files and close them. QNX4 is faster.

All of these tests were done on three different hardware platforms for both
QNX4 and QNX6.

“Dmitri Poustovalov” <pdmitri@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:absja1$96v$1@inn.qnx.com…

Which way? Only number I’ve seen came from Dedicated Systems.

http://www.dedicated-systems.com/Encyc/BuyersGuide/RTOS/evaluations/login.as
p
has a few reports RTOSes including VxWorks5.3/pSOS2/QNX4 report and QNX6
one. Since

[Mario_Charest1]

“Bill Caroselli (Q-TPS)” <QTPS@EarthLink.net> wrote in message
news:abu4gp$fj8$1@inn.qnx.com…

First of all I was only comparing QNX4 & QNX6.

Write a utility that reads sequentially through an entire hard drive, QNX4
is faster.

heu? For me QNX6 is about 5 times faster while using 60% less CPU

Write a utility that lseek()s and reads backwards through an entire hard
drive, QNX4 is faster.



Compile a project of 100 or more modules averaging 1000 lines each, QNX4
is
faster.

That’s not the OS that’s GCC.

Do a memmove() of a million bytes a thousand times, QNX4 is faster.

Don’t know about that one.

Don’t even consider the time it takes to read through a directory and
open()
1000 files and close them. QNX4 is faster.

Yes open is more expensive, but it does more.

[Bill_Caroselli_Q-TPS]

Really? Using the same hardware on both QNX4 and QNX6?

What is your hardware?

“Mario Charest” <goto@nothingness.com> wrote in message
news:abudln$m4j$1@inn.qnx.com…

“Bill Caroselli (Q-TPS)” <> QTPS@EarthLink.net> > wrote in message
news:abu4gp$fj8$> 1@inn.qnx.com> …
Write a utility that reads sequentially through an entire hard drive,
QNX4
is faster.

heu? For me QNX6 is about 5 times faster while using 60% less CPU

[Mario_Charest1]

“Bill Caroselli (Q-TPS)” <QTPS@EarthLink.net> wrote in message
news:abuha8$oj4$1@inn.qnx.com…

Really?

Really

Using the same hardware on both QNX4 and QNX6?

Yes and on two machine.

What is your hardware?

Dell Inspiron 7500 and dual celeron.

The difference is QNX6 uses DMA which makes a HUGE difference.

Note that 6.2 is slightly better at using/detecting DMA depending on your
chipset.

It’s possible that if QNX6 isn’t using DMA that’s it’s slower then
QNX4, I don’t know.

“Mario Charest” <> goto@nothingness.com> > wrote in message
news:abudln$m4j$> 1@inn.qnx.com> …

“Bill Caroselli (Q-TPS)” <> QTPS@EarthLink.net> > wrote in message
news:abu4gp$fj8$> 1@inn.qnx.com> …
Write a utility that reads sequentially through an entire hard drive,
QNX4
is faster.

heu? For me QNX6 is about 5 times faster while using 60% less CPU
\