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NY Stock Exchange Moves To Linux
An anonymous reader writes "Even the old mainframe strongholds, the financial markets, are moving away from big iron. The New York Stock Exchange is one of them, as it's leaving the mainframe for AIX and Linux. They're doing it to save money; it seems that transactions are going to cost half as much on Unix and Linux as they did on the mainframe." The first phase of the transition happened last Monday.
In Soviet Russia, Linux-running, chair throwing, Beowulf clusters of shark overlords with laserbeams on their heads welcome you, you insensitive clods!
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Wait, what are we talking about again?
I hate printers.
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
Windows isn't more reliable ... but the programmers might be a little more sympathetic to user needs ...
... just trust me on this one ... people like them." ... so when someone buys one, register an 'option purchase' plus a 'bond purchase' by going under this menu ... then use this 'merge' feature ..."
"Okay, so how do I register the exchange of a convertible bond on Linux?"
"Er... why would you want to do that?"
"Um
"Well, what's a convertible bond?"
"It's where the holder gets a fixed interest payment and then at maturity, has the option to get a fixed amount of cash, or a fixed amount of stock, his choice."
"That's stupid, you don't need that."
"Um, look, dude, people trade them, so the software has to handle it."
"Well, that's really just a bond attached to a stock option. So just enter it that way."
"Yeah, but in the financial world, it's one transaction."
"Okay
"Holy **** dude, this is a common transaction, why do I have do go through all that every time someone buys a convertible bond?"
"Well, people don't even really buy them that much, do they?"
"I give up."
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
That's a good question, but on Wall Street, speed and latentcy are becoming more importantant factors than stabiltiy. That's the reason why most brokerages locate their primary data center in Manhatten, or co-locate with the NYSE. A crash that effects everybody equally is preferable to odd processing delays. No data is better than slow data is an old mantra in the trading feild, and even more important when trading is triggered electronically and milliseconds count.