Unofficially, I haven't tried it lately but I suspect it still runs on Windows 2000.
Nah, it refuses to install. I tried it a couple months ago on laptop I keep around because it has a real RS232 port that works with an OBDII/CAN scanner I have. The OBDII scanner won't work with USB->RS232 or low voltage RS232 ports...
On the plus side I discovered qupzilla which works great on win2k, and is about 10x faster than the old version of firefox that was running on the machine.
Yes its cool, winXP boots faster and uses less ram than WindowsMobile, or Android.
I swear, that how smoothly ipad/iphones run is probably 1/2 the user experience difference vs android. I suspect that the reason its so smooth is partially the result of the fact that the system and most of the applications are written in a language compiled down natively to the hardware. Over and over i've seen functionally similar programs that just lag on far beefier android devices, that have butter smooth response on older idevices.
Is the fact that the users run in limited accounts by default.
If you setup a limited user in XP and use the "runas" context menu, or command line utility to escalate privileges you get the vast majority of the "security" improvement in vista and newer.
That is because now an application not only has to exploit your browser/whatever to gain control of the machine, it has to exploit the kernel to get outside of the limited user sandbox. Further using something like sandboxie further lessens the likelihood of that.
Once you have a few levels of protection like this (javascript blocks, flash blocks, browser sandbox, limited user, etc) then it becomes pretty unlikely that any given piece of malware actually gets through all the layers.
'capacity on demand', it is 'Licensed Internal Code Controlled Configuration.' The use of LIC CC also allows them to offer 'capacity on demand',
Ok, so I got my terminology incorrect for the part that actually controls the hardware license. Other than that I believe my point stands (that Hercules on an inexpensive midrange x86 is faster than the slowest licensed BC12 config). And so your point was?
Why would you pay (for hardware and software) for more performance than you need?
That is not the right question. The question is why I should pay IBM millions of dollars to unlock the hardware I am paying the power bills on, providing the floor space for, and have "purchased". Yes, I know IBM won that lawsuit, but that doesn't mean IBM doesn't come across as the slimiest of business dealings for coming up with such a model. At least when HP rapes you for ink you actually get a product for it, rather than having them just unlock extra ink in the cartridge in your printer.
Especially since I don't actually need the mainframe. All the RAS features i need are available on machines that run Linux faster, for less than $15k, and require me to interact with the CE on a less frequent basis because in our sample of 1 mainframe vs a bunch of HP DL 580's. the HP's are actually more reliable. The HP's haven't needed any service since they were installed, unlike the mainframe which seems to need constant babysitting. Plus, I can spin up new VM's in vmware with a couple clicks of a button vs, screwing around with zVM for days.
So, asking why I should give IBM exorbitant fee's for something I can acquire elsewhere for far less is not the right question. Maybe a better question is why I'm paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for performance that is equivalent to the 20 year old Pentium that is sitting in the junk room next door. Or why I'm maintaining a machine that requires me to manually configure device addresses, and IODF's with text editors, or writing system exits in assembly to do simple things like roll log files or get notification of tape insertions.
Furthermore, if you want to understand where I'm coming from, take a look at the specCPU results in OMVS for a 240 MIP EC12. So, next time I'm sitting there wondering if I should pay IBM a couple thousand dollars to run my job a little faster this weekend, I will remember you asking me why.
So, yah, there is a reason younger people don't want to work on those archaic machines. They don't want to work somewhere that compute time is so carefully guarded, especially since they could just spin up 1000x the compute (and even IO with the SSD instances) performance for a few dollars on EC2.
You have no idea what you are talking about. "Capacity on demand" has nothing to do with why a BC would run at 1/100 it's capacity (and there is no such thing as a 'base' model.)
Not really, sure what your trying to say? Are you trying to say that IBM doesn't license the capacity (performance) of the hardware? Or that the minimum capacity you can for a machine is only a tiny percentage of the the capability of the hardware that arrives. Or maybe your being pedantic about the exact usage of CoD in relation to how IBM licenses the hardware/zOs/linux? Cause in the case of IFL (processors for running linux) the license is most definitely tied to the _HARDWARE_ and not the OS.
Because, i'm not going to get into a pissing contest, but I don't think you have ever been involved in the purchasing, scaling etc of a zSeries machine from IBM, because I can assure you the hardware is absolutely licensed.
Here is link I have handy from a couple years ago, where approximate prices for a z114 are listed.
Notice, the fact that the minimum configuration is a 2818-A01 at 26 MIPS, and it goes up from there. Realize that there are actually only a couple different hardware configurations and that nearly all those "models" are simply capacity changes (via license keys) on the PEs.
You can click the EC12 button for more recent hardware.
"Officials with IBM said the company has "thousands" of mainframe customers around the globe but declined to be more specific.
Gartner estimates that annual global sales of mainframes will fall this year and each year through 2016, declining a total of 14 percent over the five years to nearly $4.7 billion."
I wonder how many of those "thousands" are like us. We have a single business class mainframe at minimum capacity (26 MIPS z114).
What are you talking about? What the heck is 'native mainframe tech'? z/OS?
Yes, basically, technology that provides vendor/platform lock for IBM...
For example, many of the java workloads can be migrated to some other platform with relative ease (aka POWER). No so with the huge pile of languages/technologies that exist primary on the mainframe (JCL, RACF, on and on).
2012 IBM sold more mainframes, as measured in units, capacity, and dollars, than at any point in it's history
I would like to see the reference you have on "units" cause IBM likes to talk about capacity and other nebulous terms, but I haven't seen a unit number from them in probably a decade. Plus, they like to talk about "X% growth", but try to find an absolute number from them. The unit numbers you get for ibm are for "server" sales or similar nebulus numbers which include iSeries and pSeries machine which in raw unit sales are probably 100x the mainframes.
In really you have to consider the scale here too, your average colocation data center probably has more "capacity" than all the mainframes sold in the past 10 years. Next time your CE comes in, ask him approximately how many mainframes he is aware of in your city. I just did this very thin last week with mine... He didn't give me a number but an approximate one.... Lets say, I probably have more computers at my house.
The only problem is that IBM won't license zos to run on it. So, its a major NO NO for the kinds of companies that are still running mainframe applications.
Worse yet, is that Hercules is actually faster (on a reasonable server) than the base BC series mainframes because of the "capacity on demand" features that result in mainframes running at 1/100th their capacity.
Basically, if you can't get the people it's because you're not prepared to pay (that includes money, benefits and training).
I'm going to second this. Because I had a z114 dropped on my lap as part of my current job. I hear about the talent shortage all the time. I even took the time to do some basic research on mainframe pay scales... And let me quote some other guy answering a similar question..
"why should I learn mainframe tech, when I can make 30% more doing PHP, and I don't have to worry about being sidetracked out of the job market in 5 years"
At this point companies are willing to pay IBM 7-8 figure numbers for hardware that performs similarly to high 5 figure x86 hardware, but choke over paying starting z/OS systems programmers (with other industry experience) 100k+ a year.
At this point companies running mainframes better start expecting to pay gold plated compensation packages (pushing 200k+) or they will continue to have a hard time finding people willing to spend a couple years learning technology that is pretty archaic in the grand scheme of things.
We install our product into mainframe shops, and I can't tell you how many I've seen that have their old retired mainframe guy on "retainer" for emergencies. He shows up once every couple weeks to fix something that has broken, but nothing else. Usually, he is just there to support the machine long enough for the team rewriting the application in java/whatever to get it working. Probably half of these shops, thought they would be off the mainframe a few years ago, but their replacement application still doesn't work... Frankly, after having interacted with some of the teams I can understand why the mainframe guys is probably going to die before they get it done...
What makes you think the technology in mainframes is 'dying'?
Fewer actual machines being installed. No new projects being started on native mainframe tech (new mainframe projects seem to be overwhelmingly Linux/java/other platform agnostic technologies). IBM advertises the fact that their "capacity" install numbers are going up every year, but the machines have been getting significantly faster the last few years as IBM started taking machine performance seriously again so they bury the bad news.
While AMD broke native 16-bit compatibility while in 64-bit mode, it wouldn't have been that hard for MS to add a 16-bit emulator in windows to support install of 16-bit apps on 64-bit machines.
The fact that you have to run a full blown VM for it, sort of speaks to the level of backwards compatibility that MS puts into recent versions of windows. Sort of sad that even Apple put 68k and PPC emulators into some of its OS's.
They are for different use. The mirror is to see behind you while traveling forward, and the backup camera is to allow you to see into the blind spots while in reverse.
And this is why they are being mandated, in the hopes that they can reduce the ~200 deaths in the US each year because the driver couldn't see what was behind their huge SUV.
Your not suppose to be using a mirror to backup the vehicle anyway, your suppose to look over your shoulder. The problem I have with _EVERY SINGLE_ backup camera I have used, is that the screens are in the dash/mirror/etc, and the field of view is tuned for the ~6 feet directly behind the car. So, it adds another place you have to look. Ideally they would mount them in the back seat/back of the car/whatever so you can see behind you. Turning your whole body is a _LOT_ slower than turning your head or just your eyes, so often your forced to make a decision, do I look at what is immediately behind me, or do I go for the wider view to see if I'm going to be aligned correctly, or if there are approaching cars/whatever.
Furthermore they are nearly useless in bad weather because moisture on the lense fuzzes everything, and they suck at night because the night vision blows out anywhere the reverse lights hit, and darkens everything else to black.
Plus, a lot of them are on tiny screens if the car doesn't have a nav system, which makes it _REALLY_ hard to see anything.
I'm actually convinced that having the backup cameras has allowed some car manufactures to decide to design their cars without regard to the size of the rear view blind spot because they can say its now covered by the backup camera. For example the toyota tundra has a _MASSIVE_ tailgate which literally can hide an entire car.
I fail to see how this is any worse than ARGUS, which _HAS_ been deployed over US cities as well as foreign conflict zones. The limiting factor is currently the storage space, but its not hard to imagine one of these things flying over every US city in the next decade storing a couple months of video.
Really, this has been going on for years with spy Satellites too, and no one really seems to care because the exact capabilities are still classified, but i'm betting ARGUS is just complementary to what we already have.
The ISS is little more than a fragile tin can a couple hours away from the earth. Its only real value is research related to 0g environments. There aren't any raw materials there. So if your "exploration" of space looks a lot like the Apollo program, then its a logical step. AKA, send a man to mars for a couple weeks and then forget the whole thing happened for a few decades/centuries.
On the other hand if you want robust (heavy) long term environments in space, then there must be a source of raw materials to partially support them, and they must be built to withstand long term exposure without constant maintenance. Neither of those are possible when everything is built on earth and boosted up using extremely expensive chemical rockets, and there are political issues surrounding every launch with a RTG on-board.
Plus, a lot of things are easier in a weak gravity vs 0g. Imagine the difficulty in simply digging out a bucket of ore from the moon vs an asteroid. Its even worse if you consider crushing/separating/melting it.
In 0g you have to invent completely new processes, vs modifying existing ones. So its much harder.
Ask my how much I want to be taxed to send someone to the moon right now.
Its really more about priorities. The USA has effectively prioritized all forms of police state activities above basic infrastructure, science and other investments in the country. Rather our local governments are going broke maintaining police force/population ratios which have no bearing on crime rates, and our federal government hasn't seen a "homeland security" project they didn't have to buy into. Be that massive aircraft carriers used to "project force", into areas we shouldn't be, naked body scanners, or spying programs to track everyone's movements.
Plus, in the case of the police, since there are so many of them, and stopping crime is _HARD_ they tend to spend all their time giving citations, and enforcing non violent "offense" laws that should really be matters of personal freedom (see drug laws).
Heck, the city i live in just passed an ordinance banning more than 4 adults from living in the same house. Who "enforces" this? The police of course. So if your a poor student, its now illegal to rent a house with more than 3 other of your friends.
Uh, the moon has significant quantities of iron, water, and radioactive isotopes. All in a significantly smaller gravity well than the earth.
Those are the raw materials for creating a sustainable environment outside of the earth. A fission based robotic/industrial base on the moon would be the ideal location to build the structural elements and fuel for future large scale space projects (space stations, interplanetary expeditions/etc).
Then you only have to boost fairly lightweight items out of the earths gravity well (electronics, dried food, etc).
A day late and a dollar short... Everyone who needs and has a good use for CSS variables, and other more advanced functionality has already moved to SASS or something similar (libsass is my personal favorite).. Frankly, at this point someone should probably just add a SASS flag to dump a more compressed style sheet using css variables, but beyond that I don't see a reason to even really consider raw CSS at this point.
wow, I have the same car (2003 TL), and that is one of my rants. Not only about stealership pricing, but HID headlamps (aka unnecessarily complex technology without any significant gains).
But, FYI in the end i'm running a stock system rather than one of the aftermarket ones, because I discovered a few things.
First, is that no one seems to be able to actually diagnose these things. Is it the bulb, ballast or igniter, or something else? That is why you end up spending $700+labor. Cause the standard practice is to replace the whole shebang if something goes wrong.
Second is that getting the "right" bulb is critical. I spent a few hundred dollars replacing crap and swapping things between left/right, and still not getting consistent ignition. The new "OEM match", name brand bulbs, I was purchasing for $70 from autozone, and another aftermarket vendor were basically crap (DOA or dead in a couple weeks). I assume the ones from the dealer are better tested, but in the end I found a decent brand at oreilly that literally solved all my issues. I would say at this point buy the $120 bulbs from the dealer as the first solution...
But, the second thing that probably causes the most problems is the igniter socket. When a pair of bulbs gets old it requires more power to keep the arc going and the socket tends to deform a little from the extra heat. This means that even a new set of bulbs may not be getting a clean contact in the socket. This results in either too high resistance to generate the arc, or it arcs in the socket!
So, shimming/sanding the (internal) contacts so they are tight against the bulb does wonders.
Finally, if you can see any arc when you turn the headlamp on (do this in a dark garage) the electronics are probably working and its a bulb problem.
Lastly, even the dealerships don't seem to know this information because they quoted me $1000 to replace all that crap after charging me $100 to "diagnose" what was wrong. In the end all the car actually needed was a little TLC and a decent pair of bulbs.
BTW: I did a bit of rock climbing a few years ago..
Yes, and no.. Its detectable client side with javascript on certain browsers. You could then post the information back to your server and blacklist/whatever the resulting IP (likely behind NAT which would then affect the browsers that you cannot detect it on).
And why should I upgrade my machine just to run an OS that slows it down to what I already have?
Exactly, my 5 Y/O XP machine with an SSD/recent GPU feels faster than _ANY_ win7 machine I have ever used.
And, I own a fair number of machines. But the two "desktops" that get the most use are the win XP machine connected to the large monitors/scanner/etc in the "computer" room at home and the win2k3-64 machine I use for work. Both of those machines are running SSD's recent GPUs and processors that are just a few years old. The OS's have been tweaked up to boot/respond fast (menushow delay and stuff like that).
I have a win7 machine that is probably the most powerful machine I own (recent processor/SSD/etc).. And a win8.1/openSUSE dual boot laptop. But I find win7 to be annoying and slow even after tweaking the UI for lower latency. So the machine sits in the garage mostly unused. Plus, a crapload of my old ass software/hardware, with my old ass data won't work natively on it. The laptop spends most of its useful time in opensuse because even with classic shell win8.1 is garbage.
Then I spend most of my surfing/netflix/gaming time using a touchpad/ipad/kindle.
So, basically XP works great, and saves me the trouble of fighting with win 7 to get all my hardware/apps working. Or forcing me to buy a new scanner/etc because while the scanner works fine for the dozen or so things I scan a year, it doesn't have win7 drivers. Nor do the assortment of 32-bit applications I have with 16-bit installshield. Many of these things (JTAG programmers, GPIB interface for logic analyzer/etc) are not cheaply replaced.
So, a windows 7/8 upgrade besides having an interface I find annoying to do the removal of classic mode in 7, will probably cost me >$5k in hardware/software upgrades plus another 8-20 hours of my free time to get all those applications/etc working on the new machine.
Many of which are _NOT_ improvements (see office 2003 vs pretty much any recent office).
they sell lots of overpriced software like Cognos that is a huge PITA to set up, use, support and you need a maintenance contract since the documentation is crappola
That pretty much describes the entire mainframe business. The technology has evolved but its still managed like it was in the 1970's, which as you can imagine is a nightmare. Imagine a modern piece of hardware with hundreds of CPUs/etc managed like a early 80's era DOS machine where you have a:-zz:, have to set all the IRQ's of your hundreds of devices by hand, and everything is managed using an early version of edlin and text files. Plus, you have to hack the OS in assembly to do simple things like roll your logs or get notification of certain events.
Its been a joke where I work that the zSeries is IBM's contribution to creating a jobs program to boost employment because things that take 30 seconds in vmware or with a modern OS can take days with z/vm or z/OS. Just installing and configuring the OS for basic operation can take weeks unless you clone an existing system.
IBM recently put a lot of their stuff behind a pay wall too.
I remember in the late 80s early 90s when a lot of companies suddenly started charging for "support".. Back then there was a pretty big pushback in the circles I knew, with people going so far as demanding refunds and the like once they had proven that the problem was actually the vendor's product. That is probably why shortly after everything started shipping with cards that basically say "Our stuff is shit, it probably won't work, and we aren't responsible when it doesn't, so don't try to sue."
I have steered away from vendors that put their updates behind pay walls for a few years now. CISCO, oracle, and now IBM and HP are on my "avoid" list.
Not that I like the HP DL series machines anyway. I started back in ~2005 or so when they decided that the 3.5 drive form factor was dead and promptly replaced all the models with 3.5 drives with crap capacity 2.5 chassis, and subpar cciss controllers that they wanted to charge through the nose for.
The license fees for the advanced ILO license necessary to get IP virtual consoles was silly too, especially since most of the whitebox machines include it on their IPMI implementations for free. Plus, its actually less expensive to buy an IP KVM with a dozen ports than pay the license fees for a couple machines.
The first time I saw that, I thought it was a cold idea.. It filters out the people who can't code and don't have little hobby projects to sharpen their skills.
Then I got thinking about it..
My git hub account has like 1 thing on it, my sourceforge has 3 or 4 abandoned projects (a couple with a fair number of downloads too). And I have dozens and dozens that never made it to the see if anyone else can use it stage.
What does that tell a potential employer? I can't finish projects? Well that isn't what happens at work, I do the fun stuff and I trudge through the boring parts of supporting and maintaining it too. That is why its work...
Now I have a family, and that seriously eats into the time I have for hobby projects (especially if I work 60 hours), leaving what? The time I'm at work? Unless your google working on a hobby project at work is a major NO NO.
So, really what are they getting from your github account? That your unemployed and have time to spend maintaining an open source project? That you don't have a family life, or instead of working 60 hours at your job you work 40 and spend 20 hours on a hobby project?
In the end, I'm betting most of the people who have large active projects on github that aren't their day jobs, don't actually make very good employees.
Slashdot Mirror
Unofficially, I haven't tried it lately but I suspect it still runs on Windows 2000.
Nah, it refuses to install. I tried it a couple months ago on laptop I keep around because it has a real RS232 port that works with an OBDII/CAN scanner I have. The OBDII scanner won't work with USB->RS232 or low voltage RS232 ports...
On the plus side I discovered qupzilla which works great on win2k, and is about 10x faster than the old version of firefox that was running on the machine.
Yes its cool, winXP boots faster and uses less ram than WindowsMobile, or Android.
I swear, that how smoothly ipad/iphones run is probably 1/2 the user experience difference vs android. I suspect that the reason its so smooth is partially the result of the fact that the system and most of the applications are written in a language compiled down natively to the hardware. Over and over i've seen functionally similar programs that just lag on far beefier android devices, that have butter smooth response on older idevices.
Is the fact that the users run in limited accounts by default.
If you setup a limited user in XP and use the "runas" context menu, or command line utility to escalate privileges you get the vast majority of the "security" improvement in vista and newer.
That is because now an application not only has to exploit your browser/whatever to gain control of the machine, it has to exploit the kernel to get outside of the limited user sandbox. Further using something like sandboxie further lessens the likelihood of that.
Once you have a few levels of protection like this (javascript blocks, flash blocks, browser sandbox, limited user, etc) then it becomes pretty unlikely that any given piece of malware actually gets through all the layers.
(posted from an XP machine!)
'capacity on demand', it is 'Licensed Internal Code Controlled Configuration.' The use of LIC CC also allows them to offer 'capacity on demand',
Ok, so I got my terminology incorrect for the part that actually controls the hardware license. Other than that I believe my point stands (that Hercules on an inexpensive midrange x86 is faster than the slowest licensed BC12 config). And so your point was?
Why would you pay (for hardware and software) for more performance than you need?
That is not the right question. The question is why I should pay IBM millions of dollars to unlock the hardware I am paying the power bills on, providing the floor space for, and have "purchased". Yes, I know IBM won that lawsuit, but that doesn't mean IBM doesn't come across as the slimiest of business dealings for coming up with such a model. At least when HP rapes you for ink you actually get a product for it, rather than having them just unlock extra ink in the cartridge in your printer.
Especially since I don't actually need the mainframe. All the RAS features i need are available on machines that run Linux faster, for less than $15k, and require me to interact with the CE on a less frequent basis because in our sample of 1 mainframe vs a bunch of HP DL 580's. the HP's are actually more reliable. The HP's haven't needed any service since they were installed, unlike the mainframe which seems to need constant babysitting. Plus, I can spin up new VM's in vmware with a couple clicks of a button vs, screwing around with zVM for days.
So, asking why I should give IBM exorbitant fee's for something I can acquire elsewhere for far less is not the right question. Maybe a better question is why I'm paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for performance that is equivalent to the 20 year old Pentium that is sitting in the junk room next door. Or why I'm maintaining a machine that requires me to manually configure device addresses, and IODF's with text editors, or writing system exits in assembly to do simple things like roll log files or get notification of tape insertions.
Furthermore, if you want to understand where I'm coming from, take a look at the specCPU results in OMVS for a 240 MIP EC12. So, next time I'm sitting there wondering if I should pay IBM a couple thousand dollars to run my job a little faster this weekend, I will remember you asking me why.
So, yah, there is a reason younger people don't want to work on those archaic machines. They don't want to work somewhere that compute time is so carefully guarded, especially since they could just spin up 1000x the compute (and even IO with the SSD instances) performance for a few dollars on EC2.
You have no idea what you are talking about. "Capacity on demand" has nothing to do with why a BC would run at 1/100 it's capacity (and there is no such thing as a 'base' model.)
Not really, sure what your trying to say? Are you trying to say that IBM doesn't license the capacity (performance) of the hardware? Or that the minimum capacity you can for a machine is only a tiny percentage of the the capability of the hardware that arrives. Or maybe your being pedantic about the exact usage of CoD in relation to how IBM licenses the hardware/zOs/linux? Cause in the case of IFL (processors for running linux) the license is most definitely tied to the _HARDWARE_ and not the OS.
Because, i'm not going to get into a pissing contest, but I don't think you have ever been involved in the purchasing, scaling etc of a zSeries machine from IBM, because I can assure you the hardware is absolutely licensed.
Here is link I have handy from a couple years ago, where approximate prices for a z114 are listed.
http://www.tech-news.com/publi...
Notice, the fact that the minimum configuration is a 2818-A01 at 26 MIPS, and it goes up from there. Realize that there are actually only a couple different hardware configurations and that nearly all those "models" are simply capacity changes (via license keys) on the PEs.
You can click the EC12 button for more recent hardware.
Its funny that you cite 2012, cause this is one of the first google hits I get.
http://www.reuters.com/article...
With such wonderful quotes as:
"Officials with IBM said the company has "thousands" of mainframe customers around the globe but declined to be more specific.
Gartner estimates that annual global sales of mainframes will fall this year and each year through 2016, declining a total of 14 percent over the five years to nearly $4.7 billion."
I wonder how many of those "thousands" are like us. We have a single business class mainframe at minimum capacity (26 MIPS z114).
What are you talking about? What the heck is 'native mainframe tech'? z/OS?
Yes, basically, technology that provides vendor/platform lock for IBM...
For example, many of the java workloads can be migrated to some other platform with relative ease (aka POWER). No so with the huge pile of languages/technologies that exist primary on the mainframe (JCL, RACF, on and on).
2012 IBM sold more mainframes, as measured in units, capacity, and dollars, than at any point in it's history
I would like to see the reference you have on "units" cause IBM likes to talk about capacity and other nebulous terms, but I haven't seen a unit number from them in probably a decade. Plus, they like to talk about "X% growth", but try to find an absolute number from them. The unit numbers you get for ibm are for "server" sales or similar nebulus numbers which include iSeries and pSeries machine which in raw unit sales are probably 100x the mainframes.
In really you have to consider the scale here too, your average colocation data center probably has more "capacity" than all the mainframes sold in the past 10 years. Next time your CE comes in, ask him approximately how many mainframes he is aware of in your city. I just did this very thin last week with mine... He didn't give me a number but an approximate one.... Lets say, I probably have more computers at my house.
There have apparently been a number of JIT'ed versions of hercules http://www.hercules-390.org/.
The only problem is that IBM won't license zos to run on it. So, its a major NO NO for the kinds of companies that are still running mainframe applications.
Worse yet, is that Hercules is actually faster (on a reasonable server) than the base BC series mainframes because of the "capacity on demand" features that result in mainframes running at 1/100th their capacity.
Basically, if you can't get the people it's because you're not prepared to pay (that includes money, benefits and training).
I'm going to second this. Because I had a z114 dropped on my lap as part of my current job. I hear about the talent shortage all the time. I even took the time to do some basic research on mainframe pay scales... And let me quote some other guy answering a similar question..
"why should I learn mainframe tech, when I can make 30% more doing PHP, and I don't have to worry about being sidetracked out of the job market in 5 years"
At this point companies are willing to pay IBM 7-8 figure numbers for hardware that performs similarly to high 5 figure x86 hardware, but choke over paying starting z/OS systems programmers (with other industry experience) 100k+ a year.
At this point companies running mainframes better start expecting to pay gold plated compensation packages (pushing 200k+) or they will continue to have a hard time finding people willing to spend a couple years learning technology that is pretty archaic in the grand scheme of things.
We install our product into mainframe shops, and I can't tell you how many I've seen that have their old retired mainframe guy on "retainer" for emergencies. He shows up once every couple weeks to fix something that has broken, but nothing else. Usually, he is just there to support the machine long enough for the team rewriting the application in java/whatever to get it working. Probably half of these shops, thought they would be off the mainframe a few years ago, but their replacement application still doesn't work... Frankly, after having interacted with some of the teams I can understand why the mainframe guys is probably going to die before they get it done...
What makes you think the technology in mainframes is 'dying'?
Fewer actual machines being installed. No new projects being started on native mainframe tech (new mainframe projects seem to be overwhelmingly Linux/java/other platform agnostic technologies). IBM advertises the fact that their "capacity" install numbers are going up every year, but the machines have been getting significantly faster the last few years as IBM started taking machine performance seriously again so they bury the bad news.
While AMD broke native 16-bit compatibility while in 64-bit mode, it wouldn't have been that hard for MS to add a 16-bit emulator in windows to support install of 16-bit apps on 64-bit machines.
The fact that you have to run a full blown VM for it, sort of speaks to the level of backwards compatibility that MS puts into recent versions of windows. Sort of sad that even Apple put 68k and PPC emulators into some of its OS's.
They are for different use. The mirror is to see behind you while traveling forward, and the backup camera is to allow you to see into the blind spots while in reverse.
And this is why they are being mandated, in the hopes that they can reduce the ~200 deaths in the US each year because the driver couldn't see what was behind their huge SUV.
Your not suppose to be using a mirror to backup the vehicle anyway, your suppose to look over your shoulder. The problem I have with _EVERY SINGLE_ backup camera I have used, is that the screens are in the dash/mirror/etc, and the field of view is tuned for the ~6 feet directly behind the car. So, it adds another place you have to look. Ideally they would mount them in the back seat/back of the car/whatever so you can see behind you. Turning your whole body is a _LOT_ slower than turning your head or just your eyes, so often your forced to make a decision, do I look at what is immediately behind me, or do I go for the wider view to see if I'm going to be aligned correctly, or if there are approaching cars/whatever.
Furthermore they are nearly useless in bad weather because moisture on the lense fuzzes everything, and they suck at night because the night vision blows out anywhere the reverse lights hit, and darkens everything else to black.
Plus, a lot of them are on tiny screens if the car doesn't have a nav system, which makes it _REALLY_ hard to see anything.
I'm actually convinced that having the backup cameras has allowed some car manufactures to decide to design their cars without regard to the size of the rear view blind spot because they can say its now covered by the backup camera. For example the toyota tundra has a _MASSIVE_ tailgate which literally can hide an entire car.
I fail to see how this is any worse than ARGUS, which _HAS_ been deployed over US cities as well as foreign conflict zones. The limiting factor is currently the storage space, but its not hard to imagine one of these things flying over every US city in the next decade storing a couple months of video.
Really, this has been going on for years with spy Satellites too, and no one really seems to care because the exact capabilities are still classified, but i'm betting ARGUS is just complementary to what we already have.
Random, link...
https://www.aclu.org/blog/tech...
The ISS is little more than a fragile tin can a couple hours away from the earth. Its only real value is research related to 0g environments. There aren't any raw materials there. So if your "exploration" of space looks a lot like the Apollo program, then its a logical step. AKA, send a man to mars for a couple weeks and then forget the whole thing happened for a few decades/centuries.
On the other hand if you want robust (heavy) long term environments in space, then there must be a source of raw materials to partially support them, and they must be built to withstand long term exposure without constant maintenance. Neither of those are possible when everything is built on earth and boosted up using extremely expensive chemical rockets, and there are political issues surrounding every launch with a RTG on-board.
Plus, a lot of things are easier in a weak gravity vs 0g. Imagine the difficulty in simply digging out a bucket of ore from the moon vs an asteroid. Its even worse if you consider crushing/separating/melting it.
In 0g you have to invent completely new processes, vs modifying existing ones. So its much harder.
Ask my how much I want to be taxed to send someone to the moon right now.
Its really more about priorities. The USA has effectively prioritized all forms of police state activities above basic infrastructure, science and other investments in the country. Rather our local governments are going broke maintaining police force/population ratios which have no bearing on crime rates, and our federal government hasn't seen a "homeland security" project they didn't have to buy into. Be that massive aircraft carriers used to "project force", into areas we shouldn't be, naked body scanners, or spying programs to track everyone's movements.
Plus, in the case of the police, since there are so many of them, and stopping crime is _HARD_ they tend to spend all their time giving citations, and enforcing non violent "offense" laws that should really be matters of personal freedom (see drug laws).
Heck, the city i live in just passed an ordinance banning more than 4 adults from living in the same house. Who "enforces" this? The police of course. So if your a poor student, its now illegal to rent a house with more than 3 other of your friends.
Uh, the moon has significant quantities of iron, water, and radioactive isotopes. All in a significantly smaller gravity well than the earth.
Those are the raw materials for creating a sustainable environment outside of the earth. A fission based robotic/industrial base on the moon would be the ideal location to build the structural elements and fuel for future large scale space projects (space stations, interplanetary expeditions/etc).
Then you only have to boost fairly lightweight items out of the earths gravity well (electronics, dried food, etc).
A day late and a dollar short...
Everyone who needs and has a good use for CSS variables, and other more advanced functionality has already moved to SASS or something similar (libsass is my personal favorite).. Frankly, at this point someone should probably just add a SASS flag to dump a more compressed style sheet using css variables, but beyond that I don't see a reason to even really consider raw CSS at this point.
wow, I have the same car (2003 TL), and that is one of my rants. Not only about stealership pricing, but HID headlamps (aka unnecessarily complex technology without any significant gains).
But, FYI in the end i'm running a stock system rather than one of the aftermarket ones, because I discovered a few things.
First, is that no one seems to be able to actually diagnose these things. Is it the bulb, ballast or igniter, or something else? That is why you end up spending $700+labor. Cause the standard practice is to replace the whole shebang if something goes wrong.
Second is that getting the "right" bulb is critical. I spent a few hundred dollars replacing crap and swapping things between left/right, and still not getting consistent ignition. The new "OEM match", name brand bulbs, I was purchasing for $70 from autozone, and another aftermarket vendor were basically crap (DOA or dead in a couple weeks). I assume the ones from the dealer are better tested, but in the end I found a decent brand at oreilly that literally solved all my issues. I would say at this point buy the $120 bulbs from the dealer as the first solution...
But, the second thing that probably causes the most problems is the igniter socket. When a pair of bulbs gets old it requires more power to keep the arc going and the socket tends to deform a little from the extra heat. This means that even a new set of bulbs may not be getting a clean contact in the socket. This results in either too high resistance to generate the arc, or it arcs in the socket!
So, shimming/sanding the (internal) contacts so they are tight against the bulb does wonders.
Finally, if you can see any arc when you turn the headlamp on (do this in a dark garage) the electronics are probably working and its a bulb problem.
Lastly, even the dealerships don't seem to know this information because they quoted me $1000 to replace all that crap after charging me $100 to "diagnose" what was wrong. In the end all the car actually needed was a little TLC and a decent pair of bulbs.
BTW: I did a bit of rock climbing a few years ago..
Or maybe flash it has a serverCertificaticate method you can call on a socket to retrieve the certificate.
Is there any way to detect this server-side?
Yes, and no.. Its detectable client side with javascript on certain browsers. You could then post the information back to your server and blacklist/whatever the resulting IP (likely behind NAT which would then affect the browsers that you cannot detect it on).
For examples with firefox see:
https://developer.mozilla.org/...
And why should I upgrade my machine just to run an OS that slows it down to what I already have?
Exactly, my 5 Y/O XP machine with an SSD/recent GPU feels faster than _ANY_ win7 machine I have ever used.
And, I own a fair number of machines. But the two "desktops" that get the most use are the win XP machine connected to the large monitors/scanner/etc in the "computer" room at home and the win2k3-64 machine I use for work. Both of those machines are running SSD's recent GPUs and processors that are just a few years old. The OS's have been tweaked up to boot/respond fast (menushow delay and stuff like that).
I have a win7 machine that is probably the most powerful machine I own (recent processor/SSD/etc).. And a win8.1/openSUSE dual boot laptop. But I find win7 to be annoying and slow even after tweaking the UI for lower latency. So the machine sits in the garage mostly unused. Plus, a crapload of my old ass software/hardware, with my old ass data won't work natively on it. The laptop spends most of its useful time in opensuse because even with classic shell win8.1 is garbage.
Then I spend most of my surfing/netflix/gaming time using a touchpad/ipad/kindle.
So, basically XP works great, and saves me the trouble of fighting with win 7 to get all my hardware/apps working. Or forcing me to buy a new scanner/etc because while the scanner works fine for the dozen or so things I scan a year, it doesn't have win7 drivers. Nor do the assortment of 32-bit applications I have with 16-bit installshield. Many of these things (JTAG programmers, GPIB interface for logic analyzer/etc) are not cheaply replaced.
So, a windows 7/8 upgrade besides having an interface I find annoying to do the removal of classic mode in 7, will probably cost me >$5k in hardware/software upgrades plus another 8-20 hours of my free time to get all those applications/etc working on the new machine.
Many of which are _NOT_ improvements (see office 2003 vs pretty much any recent office).
they sell lots of overpriced software like Cognos that is a huge PITA to set up, use, support and you need a maintenance contract since the documentation is crappola
That pretty much describes the entire mainframe business. The technology has evolved but its still managed like it was in the 1970's, which as you can imagine is a nightmare. Imagine a modern piece of hardware with hundreds of CPUs/etc managed like a early 80's era DOS machine where you have a:-zz:, have to set all the IRQ's of your hundreds of devices by hand, and everything is managed using an early version of edlin and text files. Plus, you have to hack the OS in assembly to do simple things like roll your logs or get notification of certain events.
Its been a joke where I work that the zSeries is IBM's contribution to creating a jobs program to boost employment because things that take 30 seconds in vmware or with a modern OS can take days with z/vm or z/OS. Just installing and configuring the OS for basic operation can take weeks unless you clone an existing system.
IBM recently put a lot of their stuff behind a pay wall too.
I remember in the late 80s early 90s when a lot of companies suddenly started charging for "support".. Back then there was a pretty big pushback in the circles I knew, with people going so far as demanding refunds and the like once they had proven that the problem was actually the vendor's product. That is probably why shortly after everything started shipping with cards that basically say "Our stuff is shit, it probably won't work, and we aren't responsible when it doesn't, so don't try to sue."
I have steered away from vendors that put their updates behind pay walls for a few years now. CISCO, oracle, and now IBM and HP are on my "avoid" list.
Not that I like the HP DL series machines anyway. I started back in ~2005 or so when they decided that the 3.5 drive form factor was dead and promptly replaced all the models with 3.5 drives with crap capacity 2.5 chassis, and subpar cciss controllers that they wanted to charge through the nose for.
The license fees for the advanced ILO license necessary to get IP virtual consoles was silly too, especially since most of the whitebox machines include it on their IPMI implementations for free. Plus, its actually less expensive to buy an IP KVM with a dozen ports than pay the license fees for a couple machines.
The first time I saw that, I thought it was a cold idea.. It filters out the people who can't code and don't have little hobby projects to sharpen their skills.
Then I got thinking about it..
My git hub account has like 1 thing on it, my sourceforge has 3 or 4 abandoned projects (a couple with a fair number of downloads too). And I have dozens and dozens that never made it to the see if anyone else can use it stage.
What does that tell a potential employer? I can't finish projects? Well that isn't what happens at work, I do the fun stuff and I trudge through the boring parts of supporting and maintaining it too. That is why its work...
Now I have a family, and that seriously eats into the time I have for hobby projects (especially if I work 60 hours), leaving what? The time I'm at work? Unless your google working on a hobby project at work is a major NO NO.
So, really what are they getting from your github account? That your unemployed and have time to spend maintaining an open source project? That you don't have a family life, or instead of working 60 hours at your job you work 40 and spend 20 hours on a hobby project?
In the end, I'm betting most of the people who have large active projects on github that aren't their day jobs, don't actually make very good employees.
BTW: LTO6 half height internal tape drive (aka normal 5 1/4" drive bay) from CDW today is $2242.
http://www.cdw.com/shop/produc...