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The Eternal Mainframe
theodp writes "In his latest essay, Rudolf Winestock argues that the movement to replace the mainframe has re-invented the mainframe, as well as the reason why people wanted to get rid of mainframes in the first place. 'The modern server farm looks like those first computer rooms,' Winestock writes. 'Row after row of metal frames (excuse me—racks) bearing computer modules in a room that's packed with cables and extra ventilation ducts. Just like mainframes. Server farms have multiple redundant CPUs, memory, disks, and network connections. Just like mainframes. The rooms that house these server farms are typically not open even to many people in the same organization, but only to dedicated operations teams. Just like mainframes.' And with terabytes of data sitting in servers begging to be monetized by business and scrutinized by government, Winestock warns that the New Boss is worse than the Old Boss. So, what does this mean for the future of fully functional, general purpose, standalone computers? 'Offline computer use frustrates the march of progress,' says Winestock. 'If offline use becomes uncommon, then the great and the good will ask: "What are [you] hiding? Are you making kiddie porn? Laundering money? Spreading hate? Do you want the terrorists to win?"'"
It's the usual argument. If you have something to hide, you're probably a bad person.
That "may" be true if the authorities are not abusing their power, or trying to gain more power than the people want them to have.
As soon as you have even a potentially oppressive regime, privacy becomes essential.
Right and there are some big differences:
Mainframe CPU's tend to have far more error detection and correction. They have safeguards against errors in data shuffling and computation inside the CPU itself. Mainframes tend to offer robust job control, by the time you add decent job control of the level that mainframes offer your network of workstations/servers starts getting complicated
Mainframes tend to offer decent encryption and security.
Can you do all these things on a pile of VM's? Sure. Is it cheaper - maybe. Is it fun to manage - not particularly.
For the point about giving everyone access to all your stuff? Let's see the author prove his point by posting all his personal details, address age, credit card numbers, ssn, medical records, tax returns and let's see how that works out for them..
One of the points I found the most insightful is that the geeks don't like to take the time to make things work anymore. I remember a colleague saying that there was no better way to kill a hobby than to get it as a job.
The days of tweaking the OS and hardware as a common practice among the majority of geeks is gone. The field is too broad now. You have to pick which stack, and where on it, you want to hack.
Ok, I give up, why you?
Are you making kiddie porn? Laundering money? Spreading hate? Do you want the terrorists to win?
Because I don't want every goddamn marketer out there trying to sell me their shit. I don't want to have to deal some horseshit like this because businesses feel entitled to stick their noses into my business.
No, you are NOT offering me "convenience" - you are prying.
As it is, I CAN create a dossier that would make an East German Stazi agent cream his pants by just hitting the credit bureaus, Google, ChoicePoint, ISPs, Cell phone companies, and every other business entity out there that has this need to collect consumer data.
Something to hide?
Well, just ask the atheist, gay or lesbian, peace protestor or Muslim who has their identity known what happens to them.
The uncle of the Marathon bombers who had his face plastered all over the place is headed for some serious shit. You just know that folks are going to vandalize his house, harass him, and give him a lot of shit just because he's related to those kids and a Muslim.
People are hateful, ignorant, cruel, shallow and just stupid - until proven otherwise. Therefore, it is imperative to keep one's secrets.
Someone in the industry realizes that computing is really iterative and what's old will eventually become new again.
I believe the origin of this periodic realizations is as follows:
(I intentionally used "jargon" instead of "technique", since the need to create a new term doesn't seem proportional to the actual change in implementation)
1. A college fresh out get hired at a I.T. farm armed with a new set of computing jargon that impresses human resources.
2. He applies his version of how things should work to the current workplace and things progress well.
3. Over the next few years the department grows and new hires are brought in to help meet demand.
4. The new hires start preaching their version of computing jargon that was created by academia to publish a paper.
5. The once college fresh out comes to the realization that the new computing jargon are practically synonyms for the previous generation's jargon.
6. The new hire proceeds to step #1 and the circle of I.T. begins anew.
The neat thing about this iterative process is that the difference in implementation of the jargon between generation N and N - 1 are small enough to not seem that much different. However the difference in implementation of jargon between the current generation and the people hired 5 to 10 cycles prior can and usually are dramatic.
I entered the field when distributive computing and storage with localized networks were being created and evangelized. Scientific computing had to be performed at universities and anything serious had to be done by renting time on a supercomputer connected via the internet. Medium sized businesses had to rent time on mainframes to perform payroll or hired firms specializing in payroll which still exists today. Small businesses had no access to computing until personal computers and single user applications came into use. Because of the newer businesses being more familiar with distributive computing than centralized computing, they scaled personal computers up to meet the new demands. This ability to scale computing power up allows the company to grow the computing infrastructure as needed. This was not possible with mainframes. Eventually the company grows to the point that it needs to have their data and application centralized and use data centers to handle the load.
If you step back and look solely at the physical structure (e.g. data center, clerical offices) it resembles the centralized computing from 50 years ago. However if you look at the actual data and computing flow you'll see that its a hybrid of central and distributed computing that was not imagined in the past 20 years. It's more fractal in nature. Your computing at any given moment can be centralized to your terminal, your home, your office, your department, your company, or even global (e.g. Google, Github).
I declare this to be known as BTE's law. ;)
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
I work with mainframes for a living. Specifically, I work with Linux on IBM zSeries mainframe for a bank. The idea is the provide the software depth of Linux with the reliability of the zSeries hardware.
We get a fair amount of resistance from the Lintel bigots, mostly those who still think of the mainframe in 1980's terms. The current generation of mainframe packs a LOT of horsepower, particularly I/O capacity, in a relatively small box. It connects to the same storage and network as the Lintel servers do, but can one of those do 256 simultaneous DMA transfers? We don't sell the platform as a solution for everything, but we've done the TCO math and we're not that different from an Intel server farm once you factor in the external costs.
I periodically give a class to the Linux admins on the mainframe in general, Linux on z, and the differences between that and Linux on Intel. If you didn't know where to look, it would take you a while to figure out you're not on Intel anymore. Most of the attendees are surprised at what the current boxes are like.
This is not your fathers mainframe.