LAN Manager might have hacked something over the top, but OS/2 was fundamentally a single-user OS, no different to DOS or MacOS.

My understanding is that NT had quite a bit of OS/2 in it.

It doesn't. They are completely different architecturally. NT was a 32-bit, multiuser, heavily multithreaded, built-for-SMP, portable, mostly-microkernel OS.

OS/2 was... Not.

Seeing that MS had rights to OS/2 and wanted a new OS in a hurry following the breakdown of their partnership with IBM, it would be suprising if they had not used parts of OS/2.

In a hurry ? It was five years between the start of NT's development ('88) and its first release ('93).

Seriously, the 8088/80286 and their addressing space limitations set back the DOS-based world by years, until Intel finally accepted that people wanted to use individual chunks of memory larger than 64K, and that they wanted to run their old real-mode DOS programs, too.

Intel wasn't the problem. The 386 was released in 1985.

Win 3.0 was absolutely awful. It crashed and needed a reboot about twice an hour.

Rubbish.

It was soon replaced with the improved 3.1.

It was two years between Windows 3.0 and 3.1.

One major reason for the split was that IBM insisted on programming OS/2 in assembler - over Gates' objections - locking them onto the 386 platform.
At least that is the way I remember it.

I think you are remembering IBM's insistence that OS/2 ran on their shiny new "AT", with it's 286 processor when the 386 was already out on the market.

It was already working on the next version of OS/2, but split from IBM's path and re-branded the new product as Windows NT. IBM then started their own separate development path and produced OS/2 2.0.

Minor correction. Microsoft - Dave Cutler's team - were working on the OS that was going to replace OS/2 (OS/2 "New Technology") that was then turned into Windows NT 3.1 and successors after the (surprising) Windows 3.0 success.

IBM took the "old" OS/2 code (that both they and Microsoft had worked on) and tarted it up into OS/2 2.x and successors.

Windows NT and OS/2 have no common ancestor. They are completely different OSes from bottom to top.

That explains why in the mid '80s to mid 90's IBM was busy in a joint venture with Microsoft first and alone afterwards... to produce a PC system with networking, multi-tasking and file permissions and even 32 bits (OS/2).

OS/2 (at least in that timeframe) was not multiuser. Neither was it 32-bit (IBM insisted it run on their brand-spanking new AT with its 16-bit 286 CPU).

And the Microsoft/IBM "divorce" was around 1990.

With that said I don't agree with GP. I don't think IBM had that much strategy.

Every non-aboriginal inhabitant of Australia is an immigrant.

Complete bullshit, as it seems you well understand:

Even the aboriginals are fairly recent arrivals if your perspective is wide enough.

I don't understand the racist hate.

No racist hate here, simply someone who thinks immigration should be controlled and targeted in the best interests of the country.

However, successive Australian Governments for a decade or more have been running record immigration rates - mostly under the guise of "skilled immigration" and associated hangers-on - with the twin primary objectives of suppressing wages and maintaining the property bubble. Simultaneously, they have been demonising the weakest and most helpless fleeing for their lives, who account for a rounding error in our immigrant intake.

Unsurprisingly, this systemic view of people as cogs in the machine to be used and discarded on demand has led to a similar culture amongst employers, most recently exposed by the exploitation and abuse of short-term holiday visa holders (usually "backpackers") by the farming industry.

As usual, the Greens have the right idea. Knock down the skilled immigrant intake substantially and increase the humanitarian intake. The footsoldiers of economic immigration can go somewhere else, we should only be importing the best and brightest through our skilled immigration plans, maximising the national interest, and using the rest of our "quota" to help as many people threatened by starvation, torture and death as possible.

When even the dodgy headline unemployment rates are running at 5%+ (real unemployment into the teens), the idea we need to be importing even more people to fight for fewer jobs is just flat out insulting - but the political right seem to believe they've reached the endgame and they're not even trying for a facade of propriety or governance in the national interest any more.

Some people use these terms in the moral and ethical, rather than legal, context.

Kevin '07 was eager to open the immigration floodgates and let anyone in who wanted to buy property. He'd drunk deeply of the neoliberal koolaid.

That's hardly an achievement. Abbot is making Kevin Rudd look good.

We had a chance to be great, but we elected John Howard and it's been all down hill since then.

Thankfully I have multiple citizenships, but NZ or the UK aren't much better. At least the latter gives me an avenue into the EU and Switzerland, though.

There is no founder of atheism to make the same comparison.

Sure there is. Everyone is a "founder of atheism" because that's how we're born.

RAID controllers do not launch reads on all involved drives. That would be stupid.

?

For a RAID1, most RAID controllers (and software RAID implementations) will absolutely read from all devices so as to service the read ASAP.

For distributed parity forms of RAID, you inherently have to read from all devices.

For dedicated parity disk forms of RAID, you have to read from all devices except the parity device.

I've never tried a mixed RAID1 of SSD and magnetic disk, but with a large enough write cache the theory seems reasonable. Most controllers [with a BBU] acknowledge the write as soon as it hits cache.

If only your "Exhibit A" wasn't mostly selective golden memory tinted by rose colored glasses. The "great uplift" was indeed (mostly) great - if you were a white collar worker in the city, or an industrial worker with a union. For the laborers down on the farm, the topic of discussion, not so much.

Pretty sure it was proportionally at least as good - probably better - for unskilled labour.

And even then the "great uplift" wasn't powered by smaller profit margins or worker's rights - it was powered by rising salaries, employment, and consumer spending. (Emphasis on the last.) It couldn't last, and it didn't.

You need strong worker's rights for (sustained and economy-wide) rising salaries, secure employment and, consequently, high consumer spending.