If that is your experience then your experience is pretty limited. The first thing you must understand is that mainframe != COBOL. If, as you state, the only thing people use mainframes for is COBOL apps, then you have to wonder why IBM has special engines you can add to your mainframe just to handle Java and XML workload (and other specialty engines for database work). So it seems that people are using 'other languages'.
Secondly, COBOL apps may take longer to develop, but that is more a function of the development requirements than the language. For instance, many COBOL apps are financial. Businesses with financial apps have this funny requirement that the code actually WORKS CORRECTLY, first time, every time. So the development cycle includes things like stringent requirements, code reviews, audits by management, audits by accountants, audits by goverment regulators, etc. Certainly you can develop a whole lot faster if you skip all that stuff, but you wouldn't want to bet your business on it.
Why? Let's say she didn't patent it, just released it to public domain. At the moment, the cells she has can be made inexpensively, out of cheap components. What happens when GreedyDeepPockets Corp decides to get into the business? It drives the cost UP, for everyone (for the raw materials at least). Now, let's say she does have a patent. She can decide who can produce it. Maybe she makes license terms that say for the first 5 years it can only be used to provide electricity for people who don't currently have it. Try not to get your panties in a knot every time you see the word 'patent'.
You don't consider a report by firemen, having responded to a fire at the residence and finding things that could kill them, to be a 'probable cause'? I can't really think of a better cause, or a better reason why it is illegal for him to have the stuff.
Should we also apply this thinking to other fields as well? Don't spend money on medical research, some new unpaid virus will come along and make us sick anyway. Don't spend money trying to cure hunger, some unpaid natural disaster will come along and kill people anyway. Don't spend money on science, any questions answered just lead to more questions anyway.
But you and your suppliers are not the same as you and your competitors. And this is where some of the problems with the GPL come into play. If you and your suppliers come up with a GPL solution, you are effectively giving that same solution to all of your (and their competitors) for free. So their is clearly no advantage to doing that. The GPL effectively has a big warning on it that says 'No competitive advantage may be gained by using this software'. It is not surprising that companies shy away from it.
As for competitors collaborating, unless the competitors also agree to not lower the price (which is illegal), someone will lower the price, forcing the others to also do so, and no-one has gained anything at all. They have effectively just wasted their money. If, on the other hand, you do it yourself, you get to keep all the rewards.
Now, there are cases where it would make sense for competitors to do this, primarily in cases where the entire industry is in trouble. For instance, I imagine that right about now the airlines would cooperate on just about anything. However, that is survival, which is different then success.
Not even remotely the same thing. Those companies are in the business of either supporting software, or selling hardware and using free software as an incentive. That is nowhere near the same as a company developing an in-house application to generate a competitive advantage, then giving that away to the competitors, thus destroying your own advantage.
The important thing to remember is that the only reason companies are using any software at all is because it offers a competitive advantage to do so. Take away that advantage and there is no reason to have the software. So no company is going to invest thousands or millions of dollars to develop new software if it is not going to provide them with an advantage.
Re:Who Cares What Language, It Reeks of Poor Desig
on
Why COBOL Could Come Back
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Yup, no doubt the people that implemented this system were complete idiots, unable to come up a system that was 'well designed'. Oh wait, I wonder what 'good design' was when this was written. Maybe it included things such as 'being able to run in a machine with 16MB virtual address space, with 1MB real memory installed'.
As for security, you're probably also right there. It seems just about every week I read a report of some COBOL-based payroll system being hacked (which you would expect, since there are probably thousands of such installations). Oh wait, I never read that.
It seems to me you are quick to criticize, without even a basic understanding of the requirements for this change. It is NOT some simple 'raise minimum wage'. It is 'temporarily lower ALL employees wages (hourly and salaried) to minimum wage'. When the budget is passed, put the wages back where they were and issue back pay. Don't forget about little details like deductions for taxes, insurance, retirement, etc. How do you calculate the withholding rate for income tax? What do you do when someones deductions exceed their pay? When the pay is restored, what do you do about people that have left, retired, or died in the meantime?
I think that the timeframe they give is not all that unreasonable, considering all that must be done. It will take a substantial amount of time just to come up with complete requirements. Then the coding must be done. Since this is a financial application I am sure there is much testing, and probably some fairly stringent auditing that must also occur.
Yup, you're right. I mean, what kind of idiots would use existing facilities just to fly an incomplete vehicle to test minor characteristics such as its "flying features in space and during atmospheric reentry". Everyone KNOWS that the correct way to do it is to build the complete system first, right down to the leather seats, and THEN see if any of your assumptions about flight characteristics are correct.
I agree completely. Maybe there should be a database set up where you could register your emergency contacts. Then, if the call center gets a call that they do not consider a 'real' emergency they could press a button and an automatic call would be made to your contacts. 'Jane at 123-4567 called to say she can't find her glasses. Please check and make sure everything is OK'. That way, the caller gets the help they need, and the police do not 'waste' time with things they don't think are 'real' emergencies. Finally, if the caller is really just being stupid, having their friends called seems like a much more effective way to let them know they shouldn't do that then posting the call on YouTube
I'm wondering who decides what a 'genuine emergency' is. In at least a few of these examples, it seems to me that the caller genuinely believes there is a real emergency. And it seems to me that if the caller believes that, it should be treated as such and not dismissed. Maybe the 'emergency' is not what they are stating it is, but neverless there must be some sort of real problem to get them in that state. Maybe they just had a stroke, or are in diabetic shock. Calling them timewasters or hoaxes and ridiculing them on YouTube does not seem to be the answer.
I'm not even sure that is is something that the police (or medical services) could not deal with. Unfortunately, one of the first things to happen in an emergency is loss of clear thinking and communication (panic). I was once at the scene of a serious auto accident where a woman and her daughter were both seriously injured. However, the woman seemed completely unaware that her left arm was severed and her daughter was unconscious. All she was concerned about (and she was VERY concerned about it) was that the eggs she just bought at the grocery were broken and she would not be able to make a cake she promised her daughter she would make.
My thought when hearing this woman was: I hope she doesn't really mean that as a result of not being able to see she just cut off her finger. Or that her husband just collapsed and HE was supposed to peel the potatoes because she couldn't see.
Um, yeah. This about trying to prevent some gang of criminals from going around breaking into university systems and taking tests for you, without your consent. Is that what you are saying? Those types of challenges only work when you are trying to protect your identity. This is the exact opposite - they are trying to prevent you from intentionally giving your identity to someone else. Here's $100, my userid/password is xxx, and my mothers name is Jones.
It is a law because the government is putting up money (student loans). If the employers just reject the graduates the loans don't get repaid. This is an effort to make sure that the employers DON'T reject the graduates. Seems prudent to me.
Except that has nothing to do with what these companies are doing. These companies are buying the patent, giving themselves a license, and reselling the patent. Nothing anti-competitive there at all unless you are a patent troll.
In today's environment, Joe Inventor gets a patent for something. A patent troll comes along and gives him (for instance) $10K for the patent. The troll then sits on the patent and waits for some legitimate company to invent the same thing, and for it to become successful. Then they sue the company for $1B. Who benefits from this?
What these companies want to do is give Joe Inventor more money, to prevent the troll from getting it. They give themselves a license. Now the value of that patent to a troll has effectively gone down to $0. Then they resell the patent. One of several things can happen: another company buys it (no change), a troll buys it anyway, in which case nothing changes for you (but the companies are protected), or maybe a group like OIN gets control of it, and it is better for you.
How do you know the server was used for financial transactions? How do you know it wasn't just used for price checks and that sort of stuff? It seems to me that if a really low-level employee (marking down items) was given a userid on this server, it probably does not contain much important data.
If it is so obvious, why has no-one else done it in the last 20 or so years that laptops have been available? Either it was not obvious, or it is not a good idea. If it is not a good idea, what does it matter if it is patented?
Did you ever install AIX? Did you notice the hundreds of copyright notices? The only components IBM could open source are the ones that say 'IBM Corp' and no other names. And even then, they could only do it if the code did not implement some patent that someone else owns. I wouldn't hold my breath.
Except that they undoubtedly have contracts with other publishers where they officially licensed the images. And those contracts may either give the other publishers exclusive rights, or at the very least state that noone else will get a better deal.
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If that is your experience then your experience is pretty limited. The first thing you must understand is that mainframe != COBOL. If, as you state, the only thing people use mainframes for is COBOL apps, then you have to wonder why IBM has special engines you can add to your mainframe just to handle Java and XML workload (and other specialty engines for database work). So it seems that people are using 'other languages'.
Secondly, COBOL apps may take longer to develop, but that is more a function of the development requirements than the language. For instance, many COBOL apps are financial. Businesses with financial apps have this funny requirement that the code actually WORKS CORRECTLY, first time, every time. So the development cycle includes things like stringent requirements, code reviews, audits by management, audits by accountants, audits by goverment regulators, etc. Certainly you can develop a whole lot faster if you skip all that stuff, but you wouldn't want to bet your business on it.
What parts of an IBM z10 do you consider 'not modern'? Just curious.
MTBF measured in decades, unsurpassed security, ability to move a LOT of data (like up to 336 FICON 4GB channels), ability to concurrently add/remove resources (processors, memory, channels), etc. Have a look at http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/resources/systems_z_news_announcement_pdf_ZSO03018.pdf
Why? Let's say she didn't patent it, just released it to public domain. At the moment, the cells she has can be made inexpensively, out of cheap components. What happens when GreedyDeepPockets Corp decides to get into the business? It drives the cost UP, for everyone (for the raw materials at least). Now, let's say she does have a patent. She can decide who can produce it. Maybe she makes license terms that say for the first 5 years it can only be used to provide electricity for people who don't currently have it. Try not to get your panties in a knot every time you see the word 'patent'.
I think you made up the point about them not having a warrant. Nowhere in the article does it say that.
But there is a difference between 'your fence is 2 inches too high' and 'you have explosives in your basement'.
Ah, sorry about that. Yes, you are correct in that regard.
You don't consider a report by firemen, having responded to a fire at the residence and finding things that could kill them, to be a 'probable cause'? I can't really think of a better cause, or a better reason why it is illegal for him to have the stuff.
Should we also apply this thinking to other fields as well? Don't spend money on medical research, some new unpaid virus will come along and make us sick anyway. Don't spend money trying to cure hunger, some unpaid natural disaster will come along and kill people anyway. Don't spend money on science, any questions answered just lead to more questions anyway.
But you and your suppliers are not the same as you and your competitors. And this is where some of the problems with the GPL come into play. If you and your suppliers come up with a GPL solution, you are effectively giving that same solution to all of your (and their competitors) for free. So their is clearly no advantage to doing that. The GPL effectively has a big warning on it that says 'No competitive advantage may be gained by using this software'. It is not surprising that companies shy away from it.
As for competitors collaborating, unless the competitors also agree to not lower the price (which is illegal), someone will lower the price, forcing the others to also do so, and no-one has gained anything at all. They have effectively just wasted their money. If, on the other hand, you do it yourself, you get to keep all the rewards.
Now, there are cases where it would make sense for competitors to do this, primarily in cases where the entire industry is in trouble. For instance, I imagine that right about now the airlines would cooperate on just about anything. However, that is survival, which is different then success.
Not even remotely the same thing. Those companies are in the business of either supporting software, or selling hardware and using free software as an incentive. That is nowhere near the same as a company developing an in-house application to generate a competitive advantage, then giving that away to the competitors, thus destroying your own advantage.
The important thing to remember is that the only reason companies are using any software at all is because it offers a competitive advantage to do so. Take away that advantage and there is no reason to have the software. So no company is going to invest thousands or millions of dollars to develop new software if it is not going to provide them with an advantage.
Yup, no doubt the people that implemented this system were complete idiots, unable to come up a system that was 'well designed'. Oh wait, I wonder what 'good design' was when this was written. Maybe it included things such as 'being able to run in a machine with 16MB virtual address space, with 1MB real memory installed'.
As for security, you're probably also right there. It seems just about every week I read a report of some COBOL-based payroll system being hacked (which you would expect, since there are probably thousands of such installations). Oh wait, I never read that.
It seems to me you are quick to criticize, without even a basic understanding of the requirements for this change. It is NOT some simple 'raise minimum wage'. It is 'temporarily lower ALL employees wages (hourly and salaried) to minimum wage'. When the budget is passed, put the wages back where they were and issue back pay. Don't forget about little details like deductions for taxes, insurance, retirement, etc. How do you calculate the withholding rate for income tax? What do you do when someones deductions exceed their pay? When the pay is restored, what do you do about people that have left, retired, or died in the meantime?
I think that the timeframe they give is not all that unreasonable, considering all that must be done. It will take a substantial amount of time just to come up with complete requirements. Then the coding must be done. Since this is a financial application I am sure there is much testing, and probably some fairly stringent auditing that must also occur.
Wasn't it just shown that nitrates do not contribute to algae blooms, only phosphorus does?
Yup, you're right. I mean, what kind of idiots would use existing facilities just to fly an incomplete vehicle to test minor characteristics such as its "flying features in space and during atmospheric reentry". Everyone KNOWS that the correct way to do it is to build the complete system first, right down to the leather seats, and THEN see if any of your assumptions about flight characteristics are correct.
I agree completely. Maybe there should be a database set up where you could register your emergency contacts. Then, if the call center gets a call that they do not consider a 'real' emergency they could press a button and an automatic call would be made to your contacts. 'Jane at 123-4567 called to say she can't find her glasses. Please check and make sure everything is OK'. That way, the caller gets the help they need, and the police do not 'waste' time with things they don't think are 'real' emergencies. Finally, if the caller is really just being stupid, having their friends called seems like a much more effective way to let them know they shouldn't do that then posting the call on YouTube
I'm wondering who decides what a 'genuine emergency' is. In at least a few of these examples, it seems to me that the caller genuinely believes there is a real emergency. And it seems to me that if the caller believes that, it should be treated as such and not dismissed. Maybe the 'emergency' is not what they are stating it is, but neverless there must be some sort of real problem to get them in that state. Maybe they just had a stroke, or are in diabetic shock. Calling them timewasters or hoaxes and ridiculing them on YouTube does not seem to be the answer.
I'm not even sure that is is something that the police (or medical services) could not deal with. Unfortunately, one of the first things to happen in an emergency is loss of clear thinking and communication (panic). I was once at the scene of a serious auto accident where a woman and her daughter were both seriously injured. However, the woman seemed completely unaware that her left arm was severed and her daughter was unconscious. All she was concerned about (and she was VERY concerned about it) was that the eggs she just bought at the grocery were broken and she would not be able to make a cake she promised her daughter she would make.
My thought when hearing this woman was: I hope she doesn't really mean that as a result of not being able to see she just cut off her finger. Or that her husband just collapsed and HE was supposed to peel the potatoes because she couldn't see.
Um, yeah. This about trying to prevent some gang of criminals from going around breaking into university systems and taking tests for you, without your consent. Is that what you are saying? Those types of challenges only work when you are trying to protect your identity. This is the exact opposite - they are trying to prevent you from intentionally giving your identity to someone else. Here's $100, my userid/password is xxx, and my mothers name is Jones.
It is a law because the government is putting up money (student loans). If the employers just reject the graduates the loans don't get repaid. This is an effort to make sure that the employers DON'T reject the graduates. Seems prudent to me.
Except that has nothing to do with what these companies are doing. These companies are buying the patent, giving themselves a license, and reselling the patent. Nothing anti-competitive there at all unless you are a patent troll.
In today's environment, Joe Inventor gets a patent for something. A patent troll comes along and gives him (for instance) $10K for the patent. The troll then sits on the patent and waits for some legitimate company to invent the same thing, and for it to become successful. Then they sue the company for $1B. Who benefits from this?
What these companies want to do is give Joe Inventor more money, to prevent the troll from getting it. They give themselves a license. Now the value of that patent to a troll has effectively gone down to $0. Then they resell the patent. One of several things can happen: another company buys it (no change), a troll buys it anyway, in which case nothing changes for you (but the companies are protected), or maybe a group like OIN gets control of it, and it is better for you.
How is any of this anti-competitive?
How do you know the server was used for financial transactions? How do you know it wasn't just used for price checks and that sort of stuff? It seems to me that if a really low-level employee (marking down items) was given a userid on this server, it probably does not contain much important data.
If it is so obvious, why has no-one else done it in the last 20 or so years that laptops have been available? Either it was not obvious, or it is not a good idea. If it is not a good idea, what does it matter if it is patented?
Did you ever install AIX? Did you notice the hundreds of copyright notices? The only components IBM could open source are the ones that say 'IBM Corp' and no other names. And even then, they could only do it if the code did not implement some patent that someone else owns. I wouldn't hold my breath.
Except that they undoubtedly have contracts with other publishers where they officially licensed the images. And those contracts may either give the other publishers exclusive rights, or at the very least state that noone else will get a better deal.