Given that the version of the OS that supports that machine hasn't been updated for more than a decade, that machine probably has been running continuously for a lot more than 10 years.
If it was bought in 1993, the CPUs were probably PA-RISC, not 68K. I can't tell for sure, because the picture was not a Stratus machine.
The current generation of CPUs are functionally dual socket zeons in 4U rack enclosures. The heat envelope allows for up to 24 cores. Operating systems supported are VOS (the original proprietary OS -- which is still being developed), Windows Server, Linux and VMWare.
My take on this is that 99% of the posters are paid Russian trolls. Well, maybe not 99%, but who else would have time to obsess over this for so long...
I certainly had never heard of it, which means it wasn't making the rounds on the liberal fundraising spam. And they will repeat just about every whacko alt-right theory they can find a link for to scare people into giving them money...
It would appear that he never bothered to learn anything while he was running. Now that he has to actually learn the facts about all these issues, I guess we can expect a lot of his plans to change:-).
And I mean the real world of sensational news stories and public expectations.
Take, for example, air bags. I don't think anyone would argue that air bags have saved thousands of lives and prevented much more serious injury. But we have just seen defects that resulted in a small number of lost lives and injuries result in sensational press stories, CEOs getting grilled by Congress and massive recalls. The "we caused less damage" argument won't cut it in the long run. In the end, the argument that wins is "We've done everything we can do and we didn't make any mistakes".
Engineers working on autonomous driving cars had better start asking questions like this:
Are all of the critical sensors and computers doing three way voting so they can continue to work in the event of a failure?
Are the remaining systems at least two way voting or using some other sort of error detection?
Are all of the actuators fault tolerant? Braking systems should be fully duplicated. Steering actuators should be triple redundant so that even if one fails in a hard over mode the other two can compensate.
They don't work if you use a sanding block for a few hours without gloves on. And then don't work a few weeks after the prints are relearned and the skin grows back...
But that said, I have seen postings that somebody with an ordinary person's resources has figured out how photograph your fingerprints and make it work; so, it isn't that hard.
I wonder how many of those actuators will be fault tolerant. I can't seem to find any information on the web, but if the auto industry is up to their usual tricks, they won't be. Not until a failed steering motor causes a massive fatal head-on on the Interstate.
They are probably still counting on the driver grabbing noticing there is a problem in 1/10th of a second, grabbing the steering wheel and fighting against a motor that is running at full torque because of the failure:-)
And we haven't even started talking about software bugs...
I at least partly agree with Mark Zuckerberg to the extent in that nobody should lose their job over their political beliefs -- at least if they don't interfere with the ability to do the job. That caveat gets trickier when the person is in a leadership position.
There is another issue in play here: In my opinion: Believing anything Donald Trump says shows a serious lack of judgement.
The 8" (and 5 1/4") floppies were very fragile mechanically, but reliable if you were careful with them. Writing on them with a ballpoint pen or pencil would ruin them. Likewise, there was no cover for the media access hole when they were out of the drive; so, it was easy to contaminate them.
Ooh, the company that is promoting the racist (or is it just ignorant?) pronunciation of Chipotle is making itself a target for campus hackers. This should be really interesting:-).
3.5 mm headphone jacks are not solid. I've had three phones and one broken headphone jack and I rarely used it.
It is possible to make that style connector solid, but that only ones I have seen are the 1/4" ones made for the phone company 100 years ago and patch bays for recording studios (also long out of production).
AFIK, nobody has ever made a sturdy 3.5mm phone jack. And that might be on purpose: If the jack was strong, the PC board would end up getting broken.
The basic problem is that the phone plug is basically a big lever that sooner or later gets used to tear the jack apart.
The lightning plugs could be designed to break before the jacks do: But I'll bet they aren't -- why make it easier to break the cable instead of the expensive phone.:-)
Not to mention that your typical college student is not really ready to learn about group work and collaboration until you can ask the all important question: "Do you want to get paid?":-)
And there is the issue of how to grade students when they have collaborated. Unless you have a course on collaboration...
One of the reasons the IRS audits regularly is when they keep catching you doing sleazy things. They are like farmers: When they find fertile ground, they keep plowing it.
Hate to break this to you, but if he wins, we will be required by law to provide most of that information. To be in public service, you have to list everyone you have had significant business dealings with over the last three years. Actually, I take that back, you have to list everyone and every thing you have received income from. You don't heave to report who you have paid.
I used to use Pen and Paper the most, but I have been getting greener. I use plaintext a lot more, now. If I have to be mobile, I send e-mails to myself from the cell phone.
Universities almost never taught COBOL. It was considered passé long before colleges ever started teaching computer science. Academics were definitely making fun of it by the mid '70s. One of the classic ways of hazing a new hire back in the early 80's was to leave a COBOL manual on their chair when they went to lunch on their first day.
AFIK, mainframes do not run in lockstep. AFIK, Stratus Technologies is the only vendor you can buy a system the runs in lockstep from. Stratus VOS systems do support COBOL, BTW -- on ia32 hardware. You can probably buy COBOL compilers for modern operating systems from other vendors, too (I've seen evidence that at least 2 vendors are working on it).
As others have pointed out, recompiling the code is going to be a lot easier than figuring out exactly what it does and recoding it in another language. COBOL is going be particularly challenging to port away from: Syntactically, COBOL is nothing to be proud of, but it does give users access to a lot of things that nothing mainstream really does. Like ISAM file systems and decimal arithmetic (which can be implemented using binary and a lot of multiplies and divides by 10). If you are going to translate COBOL into another language, you need to implement a lot of the infrastructure the compiler depends on. That will take years and needs a programming staff that is competent enough to read the standards documents.
Deleting files like this could be a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. If it is, then the EULA doesn't apply (contracts can't make it legal to break the law).
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, it was Y2K compliant. So was Linux, Mac OS and just about every other OS on the planet EXCEPT Windows.
Given that the version of the OS that supports that machine hasn't been updated for more than a decade, that machine probably has been running continuously for a lot more than 10 years.
If it was bought in 1993, the CPUs were probably PA-RISC, not 68K. I can't tell for sure, because the picture was not a Stratus machine.
The current generation of CPUs are functionally dual socket zeons in 4U rack enclosures. The heat envelope allows for up to 24 cores. Operating systems supported are VOS (the original proprietary OS -- which is still being developed), Windows Server, Linux and VMWare.
And here we have another set of Slashdot posts that are mostly from paid Russian flamebaiters. Great English, BTW, comrades.
My take on this is that 99% of the posters are paid Russian trolls. Well, maybe not 99%, but who else would have time to obsess over this for so long...
Except maybe Jimmy Stuart...
This seems like a really stupid fight to pick. If the state wants to impound the cars, they can just sign up for rides and Uber will deliver them :-)
I wonder how many of the posts on this article were made by paid Russian trolls?
I certainly had never heard of it, which means it wasn't making the rounds on the liberal fundraising spam. And they will repeat just about every whacko alt-right theory they can find a link for to scare people into giving them money...
It would appear that he never bothered to learn anything while he was running. Now that he has to actually learn the facts about all these issues, I guess we can expect a lot of his plans to change :-).
And I mean the real world of sensational news stories and public expectations.
Take, for example, air bags. I don't think anyone would argue that air bags have saved thousands of lives and prevented much more serious injury. But we have just seen defects that resulted in a small number of lost lives and injuries result in sensational press stories, CEOs getting grilled by Congress and massive recalls. The "we caused less damage" argument won't cut it in the long run. In the end, the argument that wins is "We've done everything we can do and we didn't make any mistakes".
Engineers working on autonomous driving cars had better start asking questions like this:
Are all of the critical sensors and computers doing three way voting so they can continue to work in the event of a failure?
Are the remaining systems at least two way voting or using some other sort of error detection?
Are all of the actuators fault tolerant? Braking systems should be fully duplicated. Steering actuators should be triple redundant so that even if one fails in a hard over mode the other two can compensate.
They don't work if you use a sanding block for a few hours without gloves on. And then don't work a few weeks after the prints are relearned and the skin grows back...
But that said, I have seen postings that somebody with an ordinary person's resources has figured out how photograph your fingerprints and make it work; so, it isn't that hard.
Not being sarcastic here...
I wonder how many of those actuators will be fault tolerant. I can't seem to find any information on the web, but if the auto industry is up to their usual tricks, they won't be. Not until a failed steering motor causes a massive fatal head-on on the Interstate.
They are probably still counting on the driver grabbing noticing there is a problem in 1/10th of a second, grabbing the steering wheel and fighting against a motor that is running at full torque because of the failure :-)
And we haven't even started talking about software bugs...
I at least partly agree with Mark Zuckerberg to the extent in that nobody should lose their job over their political beliefs -- at least if they don't interfere with the ability to do the job. That caveat gets trickier when the person is in a leadership position.
There is another issue in play here: In my opinion: Believing anything Donald Trump says shows a serious lack of judgement.
The 8" (and 5 1/4") floppies were very fragile mechanically, but reliable if you were careful with them. Writing on them with a ballpoint pen or pencil would ruin them. Likewise, there was no cover for the media access hole when they were out of the drive; so, it was easy to contaminate them.
Ooh, the company that is promoting the racist (or is it just ignorant?) pronunciation of Chipotle is making itself a target for campus hackers. This should be really interesting :-).
3.5 mm headphone jacks are not solid. I've had three phones and one broken headphone jack and I rarely used it.
It is possible to make that style connector solid, but that only ones I have seen are the 1/4" ones made for the phone company 100 years ago and patch bays for recording studios (also long out of production).
AFIK, nobody has ever made a sturdy 3.5mm phone jack. And that might be on purpose: If the jack was strong, the PC board would end up getting broken.
The basic problem is that the phone plug is basically a big lever that sooner or later gets used to tear the jack apart.
The lightning plugs could be designed to break before the jacks do: But I'll bet they aren't -- why make it easier to break the cable instead of the expensive phone. :-)
Not to mention that your typical college student is not really ready to learn about group work and collaboration until you can ask the all important question: "Do you want to get paid?" :-)
And there is the issue of how to grade students when they have collaborated. Unless you have a course on collaboration...
One of the reasons the IRS audits regularly is when they keep catching you doing sleazy things. They are like farmers: When they find fertile ground, they keep plowing it.
Hate to break this to you, but if he wins, we will be required by law to provide most of that information. To be in public service, you have to list everyone you have had significant business dealings with over the last three years. Actually, I take that back, you have to list everyone and every thing you have received income from. You don't heave to report who you have paid.
The first * doesn't line up with the rest of them... :-)
I used to use Pen and Paper the most, but I have been getting greener. I use plaintext a lot more, now. If I have to be mobile, I send e-mails to myself from the cell phone.
Universities almost never taught COBOL. It was considered passé long before colleges ever started teaching computer science. Academics were definitely making fun of it by the mid '70s. One of the classic ways of hazing a new hire back in the early 80's was to leave a COBOL manual on their chair when they went to lunch on their first day.
AFIK, mainframes do not run in lockstep. AFIK, Stratus Technologies is the only vendor you can buy a system the runs in lockstep from. Stratus VOS systems do support COBOL, BTW -- on ia32 hardware. You can probably buy COBOL compilers for modern operating systems from other vendors, too (I've seen evidence that at least 2 vendors are working on it).
As others have pointed out, recompiling the code is going to be a lot easier than figuring out exactly what it does and recoding it in another language. COBOL is going be particularly challenging to port away from: Syntactically, COBOL is nothing to be proud of, but it does give users access to a lot of things that nothing mainstream really does. Like ISAM file systems and decimal arithmetic (which can be implemented using binary and a lot of multiplies and divides by 10). If you are going to translate COBOL into another language, you need to implement a lot of the infrastructure the compiler depends on. That will take years and needs a programming staff that is competent enough to read the standards documents.
Deleting files like this could be a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. If it is, then the EULA doesn't apply (contracts can't make it legal to break the law).