cygnusx writes "The Register reveals that Sun's pay-for-use grid computing services hasn't picked up a single customer yet." From the article: "The missing customers prove quite shocking when you consider that utility computing users must agree to be named in marketing programs as part of their contract with Sun - a fact learned by The Register and confirmed by a Sun spokeswoman. More than one year since it first started hyping the 'pay-for-use grid computing services' Sun is still weeks away from presenting a customer to the public. The program has proved much tougher to sell that Sun ever imagined." Lights On But No One Home At Sun Grid Log in/Create an Account | Top | 215 comments | Search Discussion Display Options Threshold: -1: 215 comments 0: 210 comments 1: 165 comments 2: 122 comments 3: 43 comments 4: 25 comments 5: 14 comments Flat Nested No Comments Threaded Oldest First Newest First Highest Scores First Oldest First (Ignore Threads) Newest First (Ignore Threads) The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way. It's entirely SUN's own fault (Score:5, Insightful) by Work Account (900793) on Thursday October 27, @11:32AM (#13889228) (Last Journal: Wednesday October 26, @06:35PM) You don't embark on a large project of ANY kind without at least securing a customer or two during the development process.Unless of course you're doing something with free software like Bittorrent where you don't need to money and everything else is cost neglible. [ Reply to ThisRe:It's entirely SUN's own fault by RingDev (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @11:38AMMost of us have friends and family by Work Account (Score:3) Thursday October 27, @11:41AMRe:Most of us have friends and family by RingDev (Score:3) Thursday October 27, @11:48AM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Re:Most of us have friends and family (Score:5, Informative) by Guspaz (556486) on Thursday October 27, @11:52AM (#13889388) (http://novasearch.net/) No, he did so because he focuses on a problem to solve at the expense of other things. He didn't intend to turn BitTorrent into a business, and only founded the company because his father kept bugging him about it. He has Asbergers, a form of Autism, and it's an obsession with solving a problem that leads him to do what he does, not business sense.He didn't sit down and said "Hey, I have this great idea for content distribution that I think I can make money from."He's said this numerous times in various interviews. [ Reply to This | Parent[OT] Sorry for being your spelling Nazi by hummassa (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @01:17PMRe:[OT] Sorry for being your spelling Nazi by donscarletti (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @01:40PMHe he. by hummassa (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @02:16PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Most of us have friends and family by Shanep (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @01:40PMRe:Most of us have friends and family by Achromatic1978 (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @07:40PMRe:Most of us have friends and family by slavemowgli (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @05:04PMRe:Most of us have friends and family by birge (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @05:11PMRe:Most of us have friends and family by triso (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @08:06PMRe:Most of us have friends and family by DeathElk (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @09:47PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:It's entirely SUN's own fault by Jeff DeMaagd (Score:3) Thursday October 27, @11:41AMRe:It's entirely SUN's own fault by Usquebaugh (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @01:39PMRe:It's entirely SUN's own fault by Jimmy The Leper (Score:3) Thursday October 27, @01:39PMRe:It's entirely SUN's own fault by RingDev (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @01:53PMRe:It's entirely SUN's own fault by Znork (Score:3) Thursday October 27, @03:19PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:It's entirely SUN's own fault by jcr (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @05:55PMAircraft designed and built by amatures[sic] by phliar (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @01:58PMRe:Aircraft designed and built by amatures[sic] by RingDev (Score:3) Thursday October 27, @02:13PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:It's entirely SUN's own fault by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @11:42AM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Re:It's entirely SUN's own fault (Score:5, Interesting) by eln (21727) on Thursday October 27, @11:44AM (#13889329) When you develop a project like this, you usually need to have enough money to run it profit-free (and even revenue-free) for some period of time so you don't need to have customers commit to buying vapor from you in order for the thing to work.That being said, however, you still need to have done some realistic market research. They should have at least contacted some friendly organizations (current customers mainly) to gauge actual interest in this thing beyond just the "that sounds cool" stage. The larger the financial risk involved in the project, the more market research needs to be conducted to mitigate that risk.It sounds almost like someone at Sun got a "really cool" idea, and everyone else at Sun thought it was super cool too, and no one bothered to ask anyone on the outside. Or if they did, they only paid attention to the ones that said it was cool and ignored the others. Or they only asked people if it was cool, and never asked them if they would buy it if it were available.It seems like Sun badly misread the market here, and I would assume someone in their marketing department is going to have a very bad day in the near future. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:It's entirely SUN's own fault by dwandy (Score:3) Thursday October 27, @11:52AM Re:It's entirely SUN's own fault (Score:4, Insightful) by SocietyoftheFist (316444) on Thursday October 27, @11:53AM (#13889395) Sun misread the market? Well duh, they've been doing that for a few years now. Sun seems to think an awful lot of themselves, and they do make a hell of a UNIX, but they don't drive the market, the market drives the market and they don't seem to realize it. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:It's entirely SUN's own fault by Orasis (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @12:09PMRe:It's entirely SUN's own fault by owlstead (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @01:17PMRe:It's entirely SUN's own fault by mr_stinky_britches (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @01:02PMRe:It's entirely SUN's own fault by Cromac (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @01:15PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Re:It's entirely SUN's own fault (Score:5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 27, @01:09PM (#13890095) I am a Sun EmployeeThe Register has, to some extent, got it's self mixed up.The Grid Utility offering currently exists in 2 flavours which are still fairly fluid and are evolving to meet the markets needs.The first is a 'enter your credit card number on our secure website, submit your job and wait for the results' ('Retail Grid') which has been on limited release to early access customers for a while now. I think the reason there has been little publicity around which customers which use this part of the service is because this model isn't contract based. As I understand it, people signing up on the website do not necessarily have an agreement with Sun over publicity.The second model (the 'Commercial Grid') is a more tailored customer grid which does involve contracts and engineering development work whereby a customer is expected to return to the grid periodically to use 'their grid environment'.This service has been in use for many months and although this part of the service *was* slightly delayed, we currently have a significant number of customers and potential customers who are conducting testing and running jobs on the Commercial SunGrid.One thing we aren't suffering from is a lack of interest,Also, The Register seems to have forgotten about this: http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3 529891 [internetnews.com] [ Reply to This | ParentRe:It's entirely SUN's own fault by turgid (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @04:49PMFlamebait indeed by turgid (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @05:50PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:It's entirely SUN's own fault by Anonymous Coward (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @11:46AMRe:It's entirely SUN's own fault by Craig Ringer (Score:3) Thursday October 27, @12:20PMRe:It's entirely SUN's own fault by InvisibleSoul (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @06:00PM Duh.. (Score:2, Insightful) by shbazjinkens (776313) on Thursday October 27, @11:32AM (#13889229) Well, it isn't like computers are so prohibitively expensive that everyone is rushing to use this anyway. [ Reply to ThisRe:Duh.. by Guspaz (Score:3) Thursday October 27, @12:03PM Re:Duh.. (Score:4, Insightful) by elmegil (12001) * on Thursday October 27, @12:09PM (#13889511) (http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 18, @02:28PM) Sun's solution isn't really cheaper than a company doing it yourself. Because, after all, those machines are all self-maintaining and configuring. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Duh.. by slavemowgli (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @05:20PMRe:Duh.. by elmegil (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @05:38PMLogical decision process by cameronpurdy (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @05:39PMRe:Logical decision process by elmegil (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @05:45PMRe:Duh.. by Zemplar (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @12:17PMRe:Duh.. by tchuladdiass (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @02:13PMRe:Duh.. by Minna Kirai (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @05:11PM Re:Duh.. (Score:5, Insightful) by LurkerXXX (667952) on Thursday October 27, @01:56PM (#13890536) Brilliant. You've gotten your bean counters to cut a check and 350 dual-core, dual-processor Opterons are in a truck outside. Where are you going to put those 350 machines? You need some space. Another expense. That's a lot of hardware. Even being up for a month they are going to use a lot of electricity. Hmm, damn, it's hot in the room now. 350 high end dual-cpu machines generate a lot of heat, so now you need to back to the bean counters again and ask for money to buy extra AC units and have the HVAC guys hook those into your building. It's not cheap, but still cheaper than Sun!Great. Now you need to buy a bunch of racks and equipment to connect those 350 machines togeather. Make that 350+, with that many going, your likely to experience some hardware failures. Your getting to be close personal friends with the bean counter. It's not cheaper, but it's gotta be cheaper than Sun.Now we're cooking with gas. Now you you just need to hire someone who knows what the hell they are doing to hook them up in a workable cluster, tweak the hell out of it to get anywhere decent performance... hmm. Gotta either hire a body or contract out. HR won't want a body for short term. Ah well, better hire the expensive contractor since this is all going to close down in a month. Hey Mr. Beancounter, I need a contractor that's worked with big clusters before to spend some time here. Ouch, one who is really good, available, and will do it well and quickly is not gonna be cheap. $$$. Oh, and hope they don't botch the job so that it takes hiring another contractor (and more time) to do it right...Ahh, finally. We've cranked through the job. Excellent Now we just have to go back to our friend Mr Beancounter and have him put 350+ odd machines on Ebay for us, plus the racks, switches, cables. Oh, and the big AC units... hmm, some of this might take quite a bit of time to sell to start recouping the money. Ah well, our beancounter wasn't going to be doing much else for the next few months. Or won't be now anyhow. Oh, plus we need to have someone tear down and box everything up. Probably for shipping to 1000 different places. Hmm, and the HVAC guys will have to come uninstall the extra AC units. But in a few months I'm sure we'll have back part of the costs of those machines!A bit of a hassle, no? A big expense. You might, just might come out cheaper than if you went with Sun. Then again, you could just cut a check to Sun, know the job will go into their queue, and you will probably have your data back from them in a few days.Sometimes it's just easier to pay someone who does that stuff for a living. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Duh.. by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @03:44PMRe:Duh.. by LurkerXXX (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @05:36PMRe:Duh.. by elmegil (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @05:51PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.1 reply beneath your current threshold. Secret Projects? (Score:5, Insightful) by HTH NE1 (675604) on Thursday October 27, @11:33AM (#13889236) Does this mean that the only reason why someone would want such computing power is because they want to run projects they wouldn't want the public to know about? [ Reply to This Re:Secret Projects? (Score:4, Insightful) by xtracto (837672) on Thursday October 27, @11:41AM (#13889307) (Last Journal: Wednesday October 05, @03:48PM) Does this mean that the only reason why someone would want such computing power is because they want to run projects they wouldn't want the public to know about?No.The basis of their project is that it would be better for companies to buy processing time than to build their own distributed processing network.Of course it is interesting to see who (in the real world) are those companies?. If we suppose they are some top-notch companies that use a lot of processing power (like stock market companies wanting to run their models) they may preffer (and they may already have) to run their own servers to protect their secrets.If they are not so big companies with not too much data then they may have enough power with a beowulf cluster of this-and-that.The main problem I see here is that any company willing to "buy" this power have to ponder at least this two issues:- They have to give their data and algorithms.- They have to relay on SUNs servers stability.Now, I think the theory behind this service is quite good and, I am thinking to use it as an application case for my risk management on multi agent systems thesis. But I hope when I start looking at the test cases there are at least some companies over there using it. [ Reply to This | ParentIt's all about the applications. by khasim (Score:3) Thursday October 27, @11:56AM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Privacy by No Such Agency (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @06:42PMGrid computing is cheap really by linzeal (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @11:42AMRe:Grid computing is cheap really by petermgreen (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @02:59PM Re:Secret Projects? (Score:4, Insightful) by monkeydo (173558) on Thursday October 27, @12:11PM (#13889524) (http://slashdot.org/) The Register concludes that because Sun hasn't publicly announced any customer, that there aren't any. But, they based their conclusion on a false premise. Just because the standard agreement for this service contains a publicity clause, doesn't mean that it will remain in whatever contract is actually executed. If $customer came to Sun and said they wanted to use your service, only if they would strike the publicity clause from the contract, Sun may have been willing. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Secret Projects? by M-G (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @03:38PMRe:Secret Projects? by The Plebe (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @08:48PM I volunteer! (Score:1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 27, @11:33AM (#13889237) Can they compile my Computer Science homework for me? [ Reply to This They never called me back.. (Score:5, Interesting) by erwin (8773) on Thursday October 27, @11:34AM (#13889244) I sent an email inquery to them right after it was announced, and no one ever contacted me. I even talked to someone at Sun (a different division), and still never heard from them.... [ Reply to ThisIt could simply be advanced trolling by Work Account (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @11:37AMRe:They never called me back.. by AKAImBatman (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @12:11PMRe:They never called me back.. by Wesley Felter (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @02:32PM Cost of porting, uncertain future of the service (Score:3, Insightful) by UR30 (603039) on Thursday October 27, @11:36AM (#13889262) (http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/) Who would be willing to commit their resources to running applicationson this system, which has no guarantee of existing after a coupleof years?Selling computer platforms to customers, or providing a comprehensiveASP-style solution are more straightforward business models.And can Sun guarantee that data and applications will be secureon their grid system? [ Reply to ThisRe:Cost of porting, uncertain future of the servic by immovable_object (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @11:51AMRe:Cost of porting, uncertain future of the servic by $RANDOMLUSER (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @11:53AM Ha ha (Score:2, Offtopic) by Moby Cock (771358) on Thursday October 27, @11:37AM (#13889273) (http://slashdot.org/~Moby%20Cock | Last Journal: Saturday November 06, @09:44AM) It really tickles my funny bone to see big companies make such big mistakes. I realise that this makes my a very cynical person but I can't help the way I feel. I like it even better when Hollywood makes giant flops. Remember that stupid Alexander the Great movie last year?Seriously though, why would someone subscribe to this service? Its not like computers are overly expensive anymorew and there is a fairly broad base of expertise to draw upon nowadays for system admin services. [ Reply to This Re:Ha ha (Score:4, Insightful) by LilGuy (150110) on Thursday October 27, @11:54AM (#13889406) Remember any of the retarded movies made last year? Or in the past 5 years for that matter?I don't. Until I go to the movie store and can't find anything worth watching in the New Releases (because 5 year old movies are still considered new releases half the time).Seems to me, big industries are much more error-prone than the little guys. They can afford to be. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Ha ha by EnderWiggin99 (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @11:55AM Re:Ha ha (Score:4, Insightful) by morgan_greywolf (835522) on Thursday October 27, @12:00PM (#13889453) (Last Journal: Monday July 11, @12:00PM) Seriously though, why would someone subscribe to this service? Its not like computers are overly expensive anymorew and there is a fairly broad base of expertise to draw upon nowadays for system admin services.Ever manage a grid before? I have. Once you get beyond a few machines and start running enough jobs to fully utilize all that hardware, management becomes a non-trivial task.Some companies may want to utilize a grid, say for rendering, but they don't have the IT resources to manage such a system. Especially if their rendering needs aren't so great that they need a grid system full-time -- think small CGI studios or architectural firms that use visualization -- they won't be able to afford the IT resources to manage such a system, either.That's why there exist service bureaus that have large rendering farms available for hire. Only many of them charge much less than $1/cpu-hour. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Ha ha by Lucractius (Score:3) Thursday October 27, @01:16PMRe:Ha ha by cloudmaster (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @02:14PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Ha ha by tez_h (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @12:01PMRe:Ha ha by Surt (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @12:06PMRe:Ha ha by lpangelrob (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @12:07PMRe:Ha ha by BewireNomali (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @12:31PMRe:Ha ha by Blakey Rat (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @01:55PMRe:Ha ha by thesandtiger (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @12:57PMRe:Ha ha by Moby Cock (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @01:19PM3 replies beneath your current threshold. Price too high? (Score:5, Informative) by GGardner (97375) on Thursday October 27, @11:39AM (#13889280) There was a lot of debate the last several times this was posted about Sun's $1/cpu-hour price, how TCO is a lot more than hardware cost, etc. Still, a google search reveals a bunch of other companies who lease out CPU farms (mainly intended for rendering), who charge less than $1/cpu-hour. [ Reply to ThisRe:Price too high? by Frank T. Lofaro Jr. (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @11:49AMRe:Price too high? by Mr. Sketch (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @11:56AMRe:Price too high? by GGardner (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @12:01PMRe:Price too high? by southpolesammy (Score:3) Thursday October 27, @12:16PMRe:Price too high? by Surt (Score:3) Thursday October 27, @01:33PMRe:Price too high? by petermgreen (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @02:04PMRe:Price too high? by LurkerXXX (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @02:15PMRe:Price too high? by slavemowgli (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @05:07PMRe:Price too high? by hackstraw (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @01:57PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Not a question of price, but privacy, latency by xtracto (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @11:52AMRe:Not a question of price, but privacy, latency by steve_l (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @12:11PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. New system, new market, enterprise products (Score:4, Interesting) by jiushao (898575) on Thursday October 27, @11:41AM (#13889302) Not that suprising at this point, it is a new system, it tries to create a new market and it does so in the enterprise space. Things don't suddenly catch on when it comes to enterprise data service, Sun has to offer the service to get the talk going and in another few years we will really know if it turns out good or not. It is much too early to make any judgements about the feasability of the project.Personally I think the idea might work, but it might not in this incarnation. There seems to be a fair chance that Sun can claim to be ahead of its time again, which has in some ways been a while. Which is a good thing in itself, Sun has historically been a nice company to work with but has suffered from some stagnation for a number of years. [ Reply to ThisSmartest Reply I have read so far by kninja (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @12:01PMRe:New system, new market, enterprise products by Red Flayer (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @12:34PMRe:New system, new market, enterprise products by Minna Kirai (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @04:57PMRe:New system, new market, enterprise products by Red Flayer (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @06:44PM Important Question (Score:5, Insightful) by Tiberius_Fel (770739) <jzNO@SPAMlinuxmail.org> on Thursday October 27, @11:42AM (#13889314) An important question is whether this is a failure of marketing or a poor choice of target market. If the target market exists but is not using it, then you might be able to consider it a failure of marketing: There is demand and supply, but the demand is not aware of the supply. If the target market does not exist, then Sun has obviously chosen to go into an area which is not a worthwhile venture, at least at the present time.Though, it's possible that the target market hasn't been formed yet and Sun is going for the "If you build it, they will come"; i.e. by creating the possibility they will generate demand for it in the future. [ Reply to ThisIBM by truthsearch (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @12:24PMRe:Important Question by LnxAddct (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @12:31PMRe:Important Question by Lucractius (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @01:33PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Important Question by hackstraw (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @02:04PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Why use Sun when Zombies are cheaper? (Score:2) by G4from128k (686170) on Thursday October 27, @11:42AM (#13889318) I bet that not that many people actually need extra CPU cycles that don't want those cycles on a more permanent basis. Perhaps the only people that need short-term access to computer power are fly-by-night spammers and DDoS extortionists. [ Reply to This1 reply beneath your current threshold. Anyone notice it's still in Beta? (Score:1) by quadra23 (786171) on Thursday October 27, @11:46AM (#13889344) (http://quadra23.dlitz.net/) In fact, however, Sun is still in beta with this CPU program and not set to launch a publicly available utility computing system for weeks...It seems hard to believe that Sun would pass on the opportunity to dangle such a user in front of the press if it existed given that we're 14 months away from the utility computing launch date...The company promises us such a day is coming sooner than later and that it will have plenty of customers to name in the near future. Still, given that it took a year to push the program to a beta, one wonders how long an actual living, breathing utility center will take.I also must agree with anyone here who mentioned that you need to pick up customers during the development of the project and not just assume they'll come from no where. If you have at least one customer then they'll do far better publicity for you then thousands of dollars worth of marketing ever will. Sun might have a big name but that doesn't immediately get people jumping to their project. You don't dictate to people what they *should* do you make them think that using your product was *their* idea and that your just there to fulfill the customers requirements. [ Reply to ThisRe:Anyone notice it's still in Beta? by rathehun (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @11:53AM ChickenEggWare (Score:2) by Doc Ruby (173196) on Thursday October 27, @11:47AM (#13889354) (http://slashdot.org/~Doc%20Ruby/journal | Last Journal: Thursday March 31, @02:48PM) They should make it free to attract developers, then hype the service, grandfathering in people when it starts to take off. As it is, no one has apps, or even app ideas, ready. Sun's marketing people should know that, but failed. They have a second chance to do it right. [ Reply to This Not suprising, just do the math... (Score:5, Informative) by nweaver (113078) on Thursday October 27, @11:48AM (#13889360) (http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~nweaver/) If you have tasks that can be done on compute farms, computer farms and clusters have gotten relatively easy to manage and deploy and are CHEAP.Sun's charge of what, $1/CPU-hour is just way way way out of line compared with what you can build yourself (using dual core, dual processor athlons from Sun, for example), if you have any consistant demand. [ Reply to ThisRe:Not suprising, just do the math... by moviepig.com (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @11:54AMRe:Not suprising, just do the math... by john83 (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @11:58AMRe:Not suprising, just do the math... by nweaver (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @12:10PMRe:Not suprising, just do the math... by dommer2029 (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @01:25PMDemands big customers by Craig Ringer (Score:2) Thursday October 27, @12:26PM Pssshhh thats because (Score:5, Funny) by caffeinex36 (608768) on Thursday October 27, @11:49AM (#13889368) "My Zombie network has 1000000000x the computing power of suns grid....and you can use mine for some good CC numbers. any company CLEARING doing a cost benefit analysis realizes that its much cheaper to go with me."-Founder of P0wnd Zombi3 N3twerkz [ Reply to This Doesn't Jiva do this cheaper and faster (Score:2, Informative) by abbyhoffman (533625) on Thursday October 27, @11:52AM (#13889385) I've looked into grid computing a few times and ran a few clients as well. It seems that Jiva [jivaworks.com] does the same exact thing, but much cheaper. Then again there is also Parabon [parabon.com] and united devices [ud.com], though they tend to charge even more than Sun. [ Reply to This doesn't even let me request and account (Score:1, Interesting) by menix (179754) on Thursday October 27, @11:54AM (#13889403) (http://scandalz.net/) I'm on OpenBSD with KDE and when I click on the button to register for an account, nothing happens. There's the reason, bad programming. They don't have customers because people can't register! JERKS [ Reply to ThisRe:doesn't even let me request and account by elmegil (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @12:20PM Perhaps this is just a "hey its there, sell it!" (Score:2, Insightful) by aphaenogaster (884935) on Thursday October 27, @11:54AM (#13889404)