My first job out of college was a subcontract job writing OS code for IBM's OS/400 (which is now called zOS, I think).
Nope.
OS/400 was for the AS/400, which is now called the iSeries. (And the OS is i5/OS.) The zSeries was the name for the mainframe after the S/390. (Actually, it's been re-branded again just a few weeks ago as the z9.) The OS on the S/390 was OS/390, and after the hardware was rebranded, OS/390 was renamed zOS.
As a 20-something who works with mainframes (and who works for IBM, in the interest of full-disclosure), I must say that learing Solaris or Linux in college does not mean that you naturally have the ability to be skilled in z/OS immediately.
I was a Windows and Linux guy in college, and was hired by IBM to be a mainframe guy right out of college. It took me at least a year, and more like 2, to feel comfortable with the mainframe OS and the concepts associated with the mainframe (like a shared-everything architecture vs a shared-nothing architecture on *nix and Windows) vs. the distributed world.
Most employers don't think far enough in advance (and don't want to shell out the $$) to hire someone to be a "shadow" to the expert for a year (or two) so they can become more than just a blind novice on the platform... they want someone who can contribute now. And don't believe the hype... learning z/OS is not nearly as simple as knowing Unix and applying a few extra concepts to the mainframe side.
As for the guy who said all his friends were concerned about their mainframe jobs and that being a mainframe person was "limiting their options". . . are you serious? There's not a major company in the entire world that's not using an IBM mainframe (with the possible exception of Microsoft, HP, and Sun). Of course, you'll usually be constrained to working in whatever location a company's datacenter is located, but isn't that a contraint you face as a Unix admin, too?
Let's see, according to the submitter of the story, the page is already suffering from heavy traffic usage... yeah, let's put that on the front page of slashdot! That'll help.:-)
As someone who's worked in IBM, I can say the only thing that kept me from going to a Linux desktop is the complete and utter reliance on IE. (That, and not having a week or more to spend with no computer access while I install linux, vmware, windows under vmware, and the IBM client for e-business on both.) Most internal applications simply don't work with anything except IE, which makes Windoze unreplacable. If they could get away from IE, it would be a lot easier. That would require a lot of application redesign, apparently, though, so it probably won't happen anytime soon.
... of the fallacy of the "faster, better, cheaper" policy that NASA had started to implement in the past. I mean, designing a spacecraft where multiple stages of parachutes were all single points of failure? That's just not thinking ahead. Something always goes wrong on every mission, and if that something is even one of the parachutes, then your mission fails.
I'm all for being more efficient, but there are some corners you just shouldn't cut.
Hmm... sounds like they're getting desperate for business and cash. Probably only a matter of time before they decide that Linux copied some Solaris code and decide to sue...
I believe this could be a direct competitor to MySQL, though it has many applications, including embedded use. For example, WebSphere v5 automatically uses Cloudscape as its internal configuration database. The DB is automatically set up and configured for you, with no SQL or db knowledge needed (as opposed to previous versions which required you to know how to set up and configure DB2 or some other DBMS).
This could be a interesting move by IBM... let the open source community continue to improve and maintain a component of at least one of your flagship applications. (I'm sure they'll still have people working on it, but the open source comm. will be doing at least some of their work for them...)
I think it's important to realize that the focus of this problem are personnel who installed uncertified software, and not the electronic voting machines themselves.
As a pollworker in Georgia, which was the first state to use electronic voting equipment statewide, I can say unequivocally that electronic voting machines have made our precinct's elections run more smoothly. Many people who vote in my precinct comment about how much easier they think the new machines are to use than the old punch ballots.
Not only that, but electronic voting is actually more tamper-proof then paper voting, since you can't stuff a wad of pre-punched paper cards into an electronic voting machine. In addition, the voting machines are tightly controlled on election day, and the only way to gain "supervisor," or root, access to these machines is to use a special access card that isn't even taken out of its container until after the polls have been closed, and even then it's used under the supervision of at least 3 people. And even if the ballots were somehow tampered with that that time, you can still see the total number of ballots counted in 3 different places on the voting machines, and those numbers all have to be the same as the paper record of the number of voters that have received ballots that day. Personally, I think it's a very secure system.
Of course, in this scenario in California, if Diebold were using uncertified releases of its software on election machines, that is unforgivable. I don't disagree with the decision to kick Diebold out of these counties based on their irresponsible actions, but that doesn't degrade the validity of electronic voting as a whole.
Seeing as Suse hasn't ceased to exist since Novell bought them, I don't think you can say UL doesn't exist.
TurboLinux is one of the most popular distros in Asia, and Suse is the most popular distro in Europe, in addition to being the #1 Linux distro on the mainframe platform.
I think if Red Hat really had the best interests of the Linux community in mind, they would have joined the UL project at the beginning, anyway, instead of trying to "go it alone" with their own marketing and distro environment. Then they start the Fedora project as yet another offshoot in a community that has lots of them already... when is it too much?
I mean, nerds like us/. readers can keep all these distros separate, but the business users out there (which really keep Linux alive) like to be able to see a strategy... some sign that your company is willing to work with other companies for the good of your customers.
No, UnitedLinux was formed by Caldera, Connectiva,TurboLinux, and SuSE. SCO is obviously not an active contributor anymore, but Suse, TurboLinux, and Connectiva continue to distribute UL. UL is actually more of a brand that stands for packaging uniformity, since you download (or purchase) the UL version you want based on the vendor you choose. (i.e. You can get UL based on the SuSE, Turbo, or Connectiva dist. of Linux.)
Basically, the UL framework allows the companies to still market their product to corporations while still standardizing the Linux product and giving a (semi) unified front to the Linux world.
Adding icing to the cake, the Diebold leadership is openly pro-Republican.
So, it would be ok for Diebold to have a proprietary, fixed system if the "Diebold leadership" (actually, CEO-only) was openly pro-Democrat?
As an election offical in Ga. (and as one who works with computers professionally), I can say that the method used to tabulate and record these votes is pretty damn secure. Also, the CEO if Diebold has also gone on record after his much-publicized comment at a fundraiser saying that he was speaking from his personal convictions, and not from a professional standpoint.
Of course, conspiracy hounds will always shoot holes in whatever their chosen opponent says, but I think it's written down somewhere that all citizens of the USA are guaranteed the right to free speech... free expression of their opinions. Yes, I'm sure I've read that somewhere before.
This Diebold CEO is no different than other people who get too excited when they're on a big stage and say something personal that they regret later. Using his poorly-thought-out comment and conspiracy fodder is nothing short of insipid.
I'm an election worker in Ga., so I have a bit of experience on this issue. Also, you obviously didn't RTFA.
First, the white voter turnout in south Ga. was much higher than the pre-election polls suggested in 2000, providing a big bounce for the Republicans (Sen. Chambliss and Gov. Perdue are both from south Ga.).
Also, the only major flaw reported by any voters in Ga. was that every 1 in 800 or so ballots would have their ballot choices automatically changed from whatever candidate they had voted for to the Democratic candidate, not the Republican candidate. This only showed up on the "ballot summary" screen, so unless the voter checked their choices very closely before hitting "cast ballot", then they would have voted for the Democratic candidate. Sounds to me like that would have given the Democrats a boost, not the Republicans.
No system is perfect, but I for one, as both one who works with computers and an election worker, think the electronic voting system is a step forward.
Well, since everyone else seems eager to bash Bush and his Moon/Mars agenda, I'll stick up for him. I think it's a damn fine idea to get back to the Moon, explore it for future possible energy resources, and go to Mars.
Even if we ended up not using the Moon as a base for the Mars missions (as most posters here seem to think is a bad idea), the Moon base could be a potentially valuable station for natural resources to be shipped back to Earth.
Not only that, but I personally think going back to the Moon would be great for pride in both our country and for humanity as a whole. I remember hearing about the morale boost the first Moon-landings provided in '69... Granted, there's no USSR now, but it sure would feel good nonetheless.
I worked as a poll worker in the last election in Georgia, which started using Diebold's electronic voting machines statewide (becoming, as our Sec. of State proudly exclaimed, the "first state to go all electronic" in voting).
I have to say that I think the machines are a mixed blessing. First, the good things: 1) It's MUCH easier for the average voting person (read: old people) to vote with these machines than the previous paper ballots... you can get enlarged ballots if you have a vision problem, and can even get an audio ballot (there's a machine with headphones) if you need it. That, plus you can see exactly you you've chosen to vote for and have multiple chances in the process to check your vote and change it, if you want to. 2) It's MUCH easier on the poll workers... instead of having to manually count a lot of paper ballots (and dealing with all the chads), you can just consolidate the numbers from all the machines in a process that takes 3 minutes and then print a totals report. (Or, in some counties that use it, you can submit the results electronically via a dial-in connection to the poll HQ.) 3) It DOES NOT remove the audit trail of ensuring that the number of people who came into the precinct matches the number of votes that were cast. As other people have said, there is NO WAY AT ALL to match a ballot to a specific person because we have a secret-ballot process in this country.
The bad points of the machine were: 1) People inheretly don't trust computers. Too many people have seen too many blue-screens-of-death and lost too many Word documents (think end-user here) to trust computers... and we computer professionals know better than to trust them. That's a big hurdle to overcome. And it didn't help that... 2) The voting machines had bugs in the code. We started noticing some odd activity on one of the machines, so we rebooted all 8 of the machines in our precinct during a down time of the day. (Rebooting does not reset the vote counts... they use NVRAM to store the votes.) Then a Diebold rep. comes into the precinct at about 3:00 and (after taking me away from the public's earshot) tells me that THE MACHINES HAVE A MEMORY LEAK, and need to be reset about every 75 voters or so, or they will mess up the voter's ballot! That's NOT good, and I was really surprised and disppointed the the Diebold people hadn't even load tested their machine with 75 voters before. (?!?!?!?) Fortunately, there was no big stink made about this after the election, even though two major statewide races had surprising (and close) results.
I guess the bottom line is that machines are a good idea in theory, and they can make the process easier overall, but they MUST BE TESTED. How can you put a machine out for public use that hasn't even been realistically load tested with 300-400 voters? (A typical machine gets about 200 voters per election... they increase or decrease the number of machines per precinct based on the number of people registered in that precinct.) If the SW company does their homework, electronic voting can be a good thing... but that's a big if.
Yes, I understand your reasoning under many circumstances. If the application is your number 1, bread-and-butter, the-business-dies-if-this-doesn't-work application, however, then it seems foolish just to scrap the system without having a tested replacement in place.
When you use that strategy, as many times as not you're going to lose the both the old and new application. And if it's the application your business relies on (as this was), then your business dies (as this one did).
It was just careless on their part, but perhaps corporate politics (pardon the pun) was just too much to overcome, also.
I've seen this story, in one version or another, many times over the past decade or so - Some executive leader of a company or organization learns that the system their service is based on (which has probably been up and working nearly as long as they've been alive) is running on a mainframe, and they sniff their nose in horror and say, "Mainframe?!??!!! OS/390??? That dinosaur? We must get rid of this junk immediately!"
Then, they proceed to fix the service that's not broken by a)completely junking the proven, tested old system before a quality, fully-tested replacement solution is ready, and b)leaning hard on their (poor, overworked;) programmers to slam the new service into place in less time that it probably took to upgrade the OS on the old solution. That mold has never worked, and I think never will.
I'm not a troll, so I won't dwell on how Java (and WebLogic) runs well on OS/390, and Linux runs on the mainframe just as well as on any other platform (and Java and WebLogic run there,of course, also); but those solution possibilities are there, needless to say.
Even if they were going to replatform the whole system, why in God's green earth did they junk the old system before the new system was in place? I mean, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that you don't completely scrap your #1 bread-and-butter application before its replacement is ready and in place. Even if the new system would be light-years better... some information is better than no information (from the point of view of the networks)!!
I agree with many of these previous posts... this is, among other things, a bad case of project managers and clueless executives getting caught with their pants down -- big time.
Why would this be going too far? This is "just" a tracking mechanism for your MAC address, to make sure you've not been banned by this site. In my opinion, there are plenty of examples of going WAY too far with tracking mechanisms and other invasive software that is actually transferred to your computer... ala Kazaa, Morpheus, etc.
You also have to admit that much of the population won't know how to change their NIC's MAC and/or won't want to go to the expense of buying a whole new NIC if they get banned (picture a 15-year old asking dad for a new NIC every week, for example), so it would be effective on some level.
Of course, I suppose that won't necessarily stop spammers who know how to use the holes... but what will stop spammers? (And can you let me know about it?;-) )
I think it's just another system that works, but has holes like any other.
to say that Global Warming has nothing to do with the Icecap on Kilamanjaro melting. Then again, it's also a little hasty to say that a localized 80% reduction in the Icecap of a mountain in Africa is caused ONLY by global warming, when there are no other examples globally of warming on this scale.
Although it's tempting to point a finger and yell about global warming, I would opt for some actual scientific study of the situation. For example, Mt. Kilamanjaro is in Tanzania... not exactly your most industrialized country... and is surrounded by nations like Mozambique, DR of Congo, Zambia, Uganda, and Kenya. Only one of those nations has any significant industry to speak of (Kenya). So where are all of these greenhouse gases coming from to melt Mt. Kilimanjaro's ice cap? The greenhouse gases certaintly aren't more concentrated there than in the more industrialized areas of the world.
I'm not saying this problem is not due to global warming, however... I'm merely saying that there needs to be more serious scientific study on the issue.
Slashdot Mirror
My first job out of college was a subcontract job writing OS code for IBM's OS/400 (which is now called zOS, I think).
;-)
Nope.
OS/400 was for the AS/400, which is now called the iSeries. (And the OS is i5/OS.) The zSeries was the name for the mainframe after the S/390. (Actually, it's been re-branded again just a few weeks ago as the z9.) The OS on the S/390 was OS/390, and after the hardware was rebranded, OS/390 was renamed zOS.
Now, isn't that simple to understand?
As a 20-something who works with mainframes (and who works for IBM, in the interest of full-disclosure), I must say that learing Solaris or Linux in college does not mean that you naturally have the ability to be skilled in z/OS immediately.
I was a Windows and Linux guy in college, and was hired by IBM to be a mainframe guy right out of college. It took me at least a year, and more like 2, to feel comfortable with the mainframe OS and the concepts associated with the mainframe (like a shared-everything architecture vs a shared-nothing architecture on *nix and Windows) vs. the distributed world.
Most employers don't think far enough in advance (and don't want to shell out the $$) to hire someone to be a "shadow" to the expert for a year (or two) so they can become more than just a blind novice on the platform... they want someone who can contribute now. And don't believe the hype... learning z/OS is not nearly as simple as knowing Unix and applying a few extra concepts to the mainframe side.
As for the guy who said all his friends were concerned about their mainframe jobs and that being a mainframe person was "limiting their options". . . are you serious? There's not a major company in the entire world that's not using an IBM mainframe (with the possible exception of Microsoft, HP, and Sun). Of course, you'll usually be constrained to working in whatever location a company's datacenter is located, but isn't that a contraint you face as a Unix admin, too?
the fact that it is succeeding shows superior quality will win out in the end
Such as the superior quality of Token Ring, COBOL, and OS/2?
Let's see, according to the submitter of the story, the page is already suffering from heavy traffic usage... yeah, let's put that on the front page of slashdot! That'll help. :-)
As someone who's worked in IBM, I can say the only thing that kept me from going to a Linux desktop is the complete and utter reliance on IE. (That, and not having a week or more to spend with no computer access while I install linux, vmware, windows under vmware, and the IBM client for e-business on both.) Most internal applications simply don't work with anything except IE, which makes Windoze unreplacable. If they could get away from IE, it would be a lot easier. That would require a lot of application redesign, apparently, though, so it probably won't happen anytime soon.
... of the fallacy of the "faster, better, cheaper" policy that NASA had started to implement in the past. I mean, designing a spacecraft where multiple stages of parachutes were all single points of failure? That's just not thinking ahead. Something always goes wrong on every mission, and if that something is even one of the parachutes, then your mission fails.
I'm all for being more efficient, but there are some corners you just shouldn't cut.
Hmm... sounds like they're getting desperate for business and cash. Probably only a matter of time before they decide that Linux copied some Solaris code and decide to sue...
I believe this could be a direct competitor to MySQL, though it has many applications, including embedded use. For example, WebSphere v5 automatically uses Cloudscape as its internal configuration database. The DB is automatically set up and configured for you, with no SQL or db knowledge needed (as opposed to previous versions which required you to know how to set up and configure DB2 or some other DBMS).
This could be a interesting move by IBM... let the open source community continue to improve and maintain a component of at least one of your flagship applications. (I'm sure they'll still have people working on it, but the open source comm. will be doing at least some of their work for them...)
I think it's important to realize that the focus of this problem are personnel who installed uncertified software, and not the electronic voting machines themselves.
As a pollworker in Georgia, which was the first state to use electronic voting equipment statewide, I can say unequivocally that electronic voting machines have made our precinct's elections run more smoothly. Many people who vote in my precinct comment about how much easier they think the new machines are to use than the old punch ballots.
Not only that, but electronic voting is actually more tamper-proof then paper voting, since you can't stuff a wad of pre-punched paper cards into an electronic voting machine. In addition, the voting machines are tightly controlled on election day, and the only way to gain "supervisor," or root, access to these machines is to use a special access card that isn't even taken out of its container until after the polls have been closed, and even then it's used under the supervision of at least 3 people. And even if the ballots were somehow tampered with that that time, you can still see the total number of ballots counted in 3 different places on the voting machines, and those numbers all have to be the same as the paper record of the number of voters that have received ballots that day. Personally, I think it's a very secure system.
Of course, in this scenario in California, if Diebold were using uncertified releases of its software on election machines, that is unforgivable. I don't disagree with the decision to kick Diebold out of these counties based on their irresponsible actions, but that doesn't degrade the validity of electronic voting as a whole.
Seeing as Suse hasn't ceased to exist since Novell bought them, I don't think you can say UL doesn't exist.
/. readers can keep all these distros separate, but the business users out there (which really keep Linux alive) like to be able to see a strategy... some sign that your company is willing to work with other companies for the good of your customers.
TurboLinux is one of the most popular distros in Asia, and Suse is the most popular distro in Europe, in addition to being the #1 Linux distro on the mainframe platform.
I think if Red Hat really had the best interests of the Linux community in mind, they would have joined the UL project at the beginning, anyway, instead of trying to "go it alone" with their own marketing and distro environment. Then they start the Fedora project as yet another offshoot in a community that has lots of them already... when is it too much?
I mean, nerds like us
No, UnitedLinux was formed by Caldera, Connectiva,TurboLinux, and SuSE. SCO is obviously not an active contributor anymore, but Suse, TurboLinux, and Connectiva continue to distribute UL. UL is actually more of a brand that stands for packaging uniformity, since you download (or purchase) the UL version you want based on the vendor you choose. (i.e. You can get UL based on the SuSE, Turbo, or Connectiva dist. of Linux.)
Basically, the UL framework allows the companies to still market their product to corporations while still standardizing the Linux product and giving a (semi) unified front to the Linux world.
One of the goals is to "work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from open source software"
Pardon me, but isn't that what UnitedLinux was supposed to do? And doesn't UL have far more vendors participating than Fedora?
Adding icing to the cake, the Diebold leadership is openly pro-Republican.
So, it would be ok for Diebold to have a proprietary, fixed system if the "Diebold leadership" (actually, CEO-only) was openly pro-Democrat?
As an election offical in Ga. (and as one who works with computers professionally), I can say that the method used to tabulate and record these votes is pretty damn secure. Also, the CEO if Diebold has also gone on record after his much-publicized comment at a fundraiser saying that he was speaking from his personal convictions, and not from a professional standpoint.
Of course, conspiracy hounds will always shoot holes in whatever their chosen opponent says, but I think it's written down somewhere that all citizens of the USA are guaranteed the right to free speech... free expression of their opinions. Yes, I'm sure I've read that somewhere before.
This Diebold CEO is no different than other people who get too excited when they're on a big stage and say something personal that they regret later. Using his poorly-thought-out comment and conspiracy fodder is nothing short of insipid.
I'm an election worker in Ga., so I have a bit of experience on this issue. Also, you obviously didn't RTFA.
First, the white voter turnout in south Ga. was much higher than the pre-election polls suggested in 2000, providing a big bounce for the Republicans (Sen. Chambliss and Gov. Perdue are both from south Ga.).
Also, the only major flaw reported by any voters in Ga. was that every 1 in 800 or so ballots would have their ballot choices automatically changed from whatever candidate they had voted for to the Democratic candidate, not the Republican candidate. This only showed up on the "ballot summary" screen, so unless the voter checked their choices very closely before hitting "cast ballot", then they would have voted for the Democratic candidate. Sounds to me like that would have given the Democrats a boost, not the Republicans.
No system is perfect, but I for one, as both one who works with computers and an election worker, think the electronic voting system is a step forward.
Well, since everyone else seems eager to bash Bush and his Moon/Mars agenda, I'll stick up for him. I think it's a damn fine idea to get back to the Moon, explore it for future possible energy resources, and go to Mars.
Even if we ended up not using the Moon as a base for the Mars missions (as most posters here seem to think is a bad idea), the Moon base could be a potentially valuable station for natural resources to be shipped back to Earth.
Not only that, but I personally think going back to the Moon would be great for pride in both our country and for humanity as a whole. I remember hearing about the morale boost the first Moon-landings provided in '69... Granted, there's no USSR now, but it sure would feel good nonetheless.
All your students are belong to Microsoft
Wow... already slashdotted. Anybody have the Google cache?
I worked as a poll worker in the last election in Georgia, which started using Diebold's electronic voting machines statewide (becoming, as our Sec. of State proudly exclaimed, the "first state to go all electronic" in voting).
I have to say that I think the machines are a mixed blessing. First, the good things:
1) It's MUCH easier for the average voting person (read: old people) to vote with these machines than the previous paper ballots... you can get enlarged ballots if you have a vision problem, and can even get an audio ballot (there's a machine with headphones) if you need it. That, plus you can see exactly you you've chosen to vote for and have multiple chances in the process to check your vote and change it, if you want to.
2) It's MUCH easier on the poll workers... instead of having to manually count a lot of paper ballots (and dealing with all the chads), you can just consolidate the numbers from all the machines in a process that takes 3 minutes and then print a totals report. (Or, in some counties that use it, you can submit the results electronically via a dial-in connection to the poll HQ.)
3) It DOES NOT remove the audit trail of ensuring that the number of people who came into the precinct matches the number of votes that were cast. As other people have said, there is NO WAY AT ALL to match a ballot to a specific person because we have a secret-ballot process in this country.
The bad points of the machine were:
1) People inheretly don't trust computers. Too many people have seen too many blue-screens-of-death and lost too many Word documents (think end-user here) to trust computers... and we computer professionals know better than to trust them. That's a big hurdle to overcome. And it didn't help that...
2) The voting machines had bugs in the code. We started noticing some odd activity on one of the machines, so we rebooted all 8 of the machines in our precinct during a down time of the day. (Rebooting does not reset the vote counts... they use NVRAM to store the votes.) Then a Diebold rep. comes into the precinct at about 3:00 and (after taking me away from the public's earshot) tells me that THE MACHINES HAVE A MEMORY LEAK, and need to be reset about every 75 voters or so, or they will mess up the voter's ballot! That's NOT good, and I was really surprised and disppointed the the Diebold people hadn't even load tested their machine with 75 voters before. (?!?!?!?) Fortunately, there was no big stink made about this after the election, even though two major statewide races had surprising (and close) results.
I guess the bottom line is that machines are a good idea in theory, and they can make the process easier overall, but they MUST BE TESTED. How can you put a machine out for public use that hasn't even been realistically load tested with 300-400 voters? (A typical machine gets about 200 voters per election... they increase or decrease the number of machines per precinct based on the number of people registered in that precinct.) If the SW company does their homework, electronic voting can be a good thing... but that's a big if.
Yes, I understand your reasoning under many circumstances. If the application is your number 1, bread-and-butter, the-business-dies-if-this-doesn't-work application, however, then it seems foolish just to scrap the system without having a tested replacement in place.
When you use that strategy, as many times as not you're going to lose the both the old and new application. And if it's the application your business relies on (as this was), then your business dies (as this one did).
It was just careless on their part, but perhaps corporate politics (pardon the pun) was just too much to overcome, also.
I've seen this story, in one version or another, many times over the past decade or so - Some executive leader of a company or organization learns that the system their service is based on (which has probably been up and working nearly as long as they've been alive) is running on a mainframe, and they sniff their nose in horror and say, "Mainframe?!??!!! OS/390??? That dinosaur? We must get rid of this junk immediately!"
;) programmers to slam the new service into place in less time that it probably took to upgrade the OS on the old solution. That mold has never worked, and I think never will.
Then, they proceed to fix the service that's not broken by a)completely junking the proven, tested old system before a quality, fully-tested replacement solution is ready, and b)leaning hard on their (poor, overworked
I'm not a troll, so I won't dwell on how Java (and WebLogic) runs well on OS/390, and Linux runs on the mainframe just as well as on any other platform (and Java and WebLogic run there,of course, also); but those solution possibilities are there, needless to say.
Even if they were going to replatform the whole system, why in God's green earth did they junk the old system before the new system was in place? I mean, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that you don't completely scrap your #1 bread-and-butter application before its replacement is ready and in place. Even if the new system would be light-years better... some information is better than no information (from the point of view of the networks)!!
I agree with many of these previous posts... this is, among other things, a bad case of project managers and clueless executives getting caught with their pants down -- big time.
Why would this be going too far? This is "just" a tracking mechanism for your MAC address, to make sure you've not been banned by this site. In my opinion, there are plenty of examples of going WAY too far with tracking mechanisms and other invasive software that is actually transferred to your computer... ala Kazaa, Morpheus, etc.
;-) )
You also have to admit that much of the population won't know how to change their NIC's MAC and/or won't want to go to the expense of buying a whole new NIC if they get banned (picture a 15-year old asking dad for a new NIC every week, for example), so it would be effective on some level.
Of course, I suppose that won't necessarily stop spammers who know how to use the holes... but what will stop spammers? (And can you let me know about it?
I think it's just another system that works, but has holes like any other.
to say that Global Warming has nothing to do with the Icecap on Kilamanjaro melting. Then again, it's also a little hasty to say that a localized 80% reduction in the Icecap of a mountain in Africa is caused ONLY by global warming, when there are no other examples globally of warming on this scale.
Although it's tempting to point a finger and yell about global warming, I would opt for some actual scientific study of the situation. For example, Mt. Kilamanjaro is in Tanzania... not exactly your most industrialized country... and is surrounded by nations like Mozambique, DR of Congo, Zambia, Uganda, and Kenya. Only one of those nations has any significant industry to speak of (Kenya). So where are all of these greenhouse gases coming from to melt Mt. Kilimanjaro's ice cap? The greenhouse gases certaintly aren't more concentrated there than in the more industrialized areas of the world.
I'm not saying this problem is not due to global warming, however... I'm merely saying that there needs to be more serious scientific study on the issue.