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Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 08:43:38 -0600
From: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com>
Organization: Softweyr LLC
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Subject: Re: Interesting article.
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Bakul Shah wrote:
> 
> > > Though, a lack of good Unicode support on FreeBSD seems like
> > > a legitimate enough reason for the move.
> >
> > Yes, it would, if it were true, see /usr/ports/devel/libunicode.
> 
> One port does not make good support.  For that FreeBDS has to
> have native unicode support.

Why?  All they're interested in is having unicode in their web-based app.

> > In order to determine if they really made any savings or not -- I
> > notice that they've increased the number of servers at Hotmail from
> > 3,400 to 5,000 - you'd also have to determine how much they could have
> > improved the performance by merely writing their code as an Apache
> > module.
> 
> If as they claim they doubled the performance, they saved a
> few mil in not having to use 10,000 servers.  My point was
> they didn't save *as much money as* they could've, had they
> used various performance increasing tricks we are well aware
> of.

We're definitely in agreement on that.  They did not start this project
to save money, though they claim that as a motivation.  It would have 
(most likely) been far less expensive to make a few performance
enhancements to Apache itself, or to the interface they use for their 
application code.  Of course, that would not have been a testimonial 
for Win2K or IIS.

> > So, was that 18 month development project really necessary from a
> > technical standpoint, or only justified as a marketing cost?  Nobody
> > outside Microsoft management will ever really know.
> 
> Suspect the most likely cause of conversion can be summed up
> in the phrase `eating your own dogfood'.

Which is fine, but it's disingenous to declare it a 'cost-saving measure'
when it was obviously very expensive.

-- 
            "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"

Wes Peters                                                         Softweyr LLC
wes@softweyr.com                                           http://softweyr.com/

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