I started off as a COBOL guy, in 94'. Then learned C, C++, and Java. When I do code, it's either COBOL or Java these days.
Now, all the older COBOL guys have been retiring, especially after Y2K. The way i see it, my future is back on the mainframe - there's a LOT of COBOL/CICS and DB2 code running and _someone_ is going to need to maintain it. Since i grok both platforms, I feel pretty good about the future - and the guys in India don't generally do COBOL - they don't teach it in the schools over there either.:)
Heck, for my new system we are writing a big part of it in COBOL with some CICS, that's brand new code, and we expect it to last for at least 20 years.
>>In a modern programming language with a modern relational database, no problem. In COBOL with an obsolete non-relational DB, perhaps even one with 80-column mindset? Yeah, right. Good luck with that.
I totally disagree with you there. The kind of problem they are facing is likely more of a business rules issue, than one of technology. The system is being asked to do something for which it wasn't designed - floor() everyone's salary, then keep track of the diffs.
No RDBMS is going to do that for you. You need to code it.
You may be right that their architecture is antiquated, but that would only be a contributing factor to the issue - at best. It it was antiquated, yet coded to perform the task at hand then there'd be no, or little, issue.
I write systems in both COBOL and Java (for a big faceless mega-bank) - so I know the pros and cons of each.
BTW, I am happy that the state of CA is having trouble lowering the poor workers salaries. Like they should have to suffer because the lard-asses in the rest of the government there can't get it together and balance the budget.
>>The same can be said of creationism, but that doesn't mean it isn't totally bullshit.
Perhaps.
I suspect that if there were a bit of scientific evidence of creationism - something to go on other than religious texts - there would be a flock of people investigating the topic..especially given the importance of the answer (important on many levels).
Rather the fusion/cold fusion thing does have a bit of 'unexplained result' to dig into, thus the interest and studies.
The Maintenance Supervisor of of the Moisture Farm noticed a signal coming in from the stolen controller. Interestingly it was coming from the Sandcrawler of the Jawas who had just sold him a bum R2 unit...
I'll agree to this... a computer is nothing more then a machine that performs programmed/specified repetative tasks really fast. Does not have to be related to math or computation.
1. An Atari 2600 - 1977, so 30 years old..still kicking and still fun. Much the same can be said for other videgames of the era..intellivision, handheld Coleco Football...if they're still working the code is still running.
2. At my shop I've seen COBOL code which was last compiled in 1976..still running..source code is gone..more or less the same story as the DOD (old code) posts above
3. Someone else did mention Branch14 (iefbr14)..has been around forever.
4. Os 390 itself? It and it's utilities(besides branch14) must have some very old code.
5. Not quite as old as os/390 but modern UNIX (solaris, BSD, whatever) probably has some of the original code written by Kernighan and Thompson.
So from my 20 years in the IT business, that's my knowledge of old code...
>>have no particular loyalty or special fuzzy warm feelings for any company due to their "geographical" attributes as you suggest. I said quite clearly, "It's NOT FAIR". That is not a vague statement. It means that Corporation A has an unfair advantage over Corporation B.
And the reason said advantage exists is because NY State (and every other municipality) tax the living hell out of everything.
Of course people are going to look for an alternative... we all pay too much in tax as it is... 47% of my income goes to taxes... In NY I have to pay 8 1/4 % on each purchase....the retailer has to pay 8 1/4 % on his side of the purchase too(plus federal tax as income)... my interest on my bank account is taxed(and the bankd and fed gov't make money using my savings money)... I have to pay tax on my utility bills... and on gasoline... and on food... as do the gas stations, and supermarkets..
and to top it off I have to spend $8 on a fracking bridge or a tunnel to get out of the city.
In the end..I think that 70% of money that I earn goes to taxes... the govt finds every little thing and attaches a tax to it...for what? To keep running this awesome country where the 3rd largest city is the prison population?
But to get back on track.. they THINK they're deprived of $50 million a year. But what's happening is that people are looking for any possible alternative to being squeezed.
What an assenine bill. I didn't even know this thing existed...sneaky bastards..I wonder if this is a leftover from Spitzer's todo list.
Hell, if this passes I will just have to buy internet stuff from my NJ work location, have it shipped to my Brother-In-Law's house in Piscataway, NJ, and pick it up on my way home from work after it's delivered.
I know that most don't have this option, but it's a workaround I'd be able to live with, given that I'm in NJ 6 days each week....
>>I think the Gen Y or Millenials or whatever they're called has their priorities in order. Basing your life on your career and job is idiotic and I think that's where my generation is clueless
I don't disagree with what you're saying. But at the same time, you're wrong. Us gen x-ers are not clueless about this stuff, we went into our working lives expecting better than we ended up with.
In my view, we gen x-ers were raised in a different time, by parents who worked in an environment where you had a job for life. The value set of being loyal to a company is part of who we are..or were. We're adjusting slowly as things deteriorate..as we finally figure out that there is no such thing as a job for life anymore.
The gen y kids were raised to see the shit we have to deal with, and they've developed attitudes to compensate and protect themselves.
Wouldn't it be cool if one could reset the device simply by flipping it over (hourglass style), rather than having to use some mechanism to reset the weight to the top of the device?
Slashdot Mirror
>>What 10 year old or 20 year old nugget of information still serves
you in WinDOS?
Notepad, Solitaire, and the bluescreen.
Oh what a joke this is. LOL.
I started off as a COBOL guy, in 94'. Then learned C, C++, and Java. When I do code, it's either COBOL or Java these days.
Now, all the older COBOL guys have been retiring, especially after Y2K. The way i see it, my future is back on the mainframe - there's a LOT of COBOL/CICS and DB2 code running and _someone_ is going to need to maintain it. Since i grok both platforms, I feel pretty good about the future - and the guys in India don't generally do COBOL - they don't teach it in the schools over there either. :)
Heck, for my new system we are writing a big part of it in COBOL with some CICS, that's brand new code, and we expect it to last for at least 20 years.
PERFORM NOSTALIGIA
would be much better coded as
PERFORM NOSTALIGIA THRU NOSTALIGIA-EXIT.
Much better to have a clear ending point, so as to eliminate the possibility of runaway code.
>>In a modern programming language with a modern relational database, no problem. In COBOL with an obsolete non-relational DB, perhaps even one with 80-column mindset? Yeah, right. Good luck with that.
I totally disagree with you there. The kind of problem they are facing is likely more of a business rules issue, than one of technology. The system is being asked to do something for which it wasn't designed - floor() everyone's salary, then keep track of the diffs.
No RDBMS is going to do that for you. You need to code it.
You may be right that their architecture is antiquated, but that would only be a contributing factor to the issue - at best. It it was antiquated, yet coded to perform the task at hand then there'd be no, or little, issue.
I write systems in both COBOL and Java (for a big faceless mega-bank) - so I know the pros and cons of each.
BTW, I am happy that the state of CA is having trouble lowering the poor workers salaries. Like they should have to suffer because the lard-asses in the rest of the government there can't get it together and balance the budget.
>>The same can be said of creationism, but that doesn't mean it isn't totally bullshit.
Perhaps.
I suspect that if there were a bit of scientific evidence of creationism - something to go on other than religious texts - there would be a flock of people investigating the topic..especially given the importance of the answer (important on many levels).
Rather the fusion/cold fusion thing does have a bit of 'unexplained result' to dig into, thus the interest and studies.
Donkey Pong?
Actually, I've a subscription. I read The Fracking Article before posting was enabled.
1. read TFA
2. post
3. ???
4. Profit!!!
Well, what they probably needed was a Threepio unit who understood the binary language of the controller.
From My Fake Version Of The Article:
The Maintenance Supervisor of of the Moisture Farm noticed a signal coming in from the stolen controller. Interestingly it was coming from the Sandcrawler of the Jawas who had just sold him a bum R2 unit...
No, they can only screw you if you're running a Windows OS.
They probably install some variant of Back Orifice before slamming in the Trojan.
T
h
a
n
k
s
f
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!
!
>>Of course not. Slashdot is more interesting than asparagus, though sometimes not as intelligent
Asparagus,IMHO, does come in nicer shades of green though.
>>Just with the interest they could make without any strategic investing, they could pay each employee at the company $30,000 a year.
Sounds like a pretty good salary for Delhi or Mumbai...
Well I won't know until I observe it.
Please mod parent up.
I'll agree to this... a computer is nothing more then a machine that performs programmed/specified repetative tasks really fast. Does not have to be related to math or computation.
I think the loom qualifies.
1. An Atari 2600 - 1977, so 30 years old..still kicking and still fun. Much the same can be said for other videgames of the era..intellivision, handheld Coleco Football...if they're still working the code is still running.
2. At my shop I've seen COBOL code which was last compiled in 1976..still running..source code is gone..more or less the same story as the DOD (old code) posts above
3. Someone else did mention Branch14 (iefbr14)..has been around forever.
4. Os 390 itself? It and it's utilities(besides branch14) must have some very old code.
5. Not quite as old as os/390 but modern UNIX (solaris, BSD, whatever) probably has some of the original code written by Kernighan and Thompson.
So from my 20 years in the IT business, that's my knowledge of old code...
>>have no particular loyalty or special fuzzy warm feelings for any company due to their "geographical" attributes as you suggest. I said quite clearly, "It's NOT FAIR". That is not a vague statement. It means that Corporation A has an unfair advantage over Corporation B.
And the reason said advantage exists is because NY State (and every other municipality) tax the living hell out of everything.
Of course people are going to look for an alternative... we all pay too much in tax as it is... 47% of my income goes to taxes... In NY I have to pay 8 1/4 % on each purchase....the retailer has to pay 8 1/4 % on his side of the purchase too(plus federal tax as income)... my interest on my bank account is taxed(and the bankd and fed gov't make money using my savings money)... I have to pay tax on my utility bills... and on gasoline... and on food... as do the gas stations, and supermarkets..
and to top it off I have to spend $8 on a fracking bridge or a tunnel to get out of the city.
In the end..I think that 70% of money that I earn goes to taxes... the govt finds every little thing and attaches a tax to it...for what? To keep running this awesome country where the 3rd largest city is the prison population?
But to get back on track.. they THINK they're deprived of $50 million a year. But what's happening is that people are looking for any possible alternative to being squeezed.
I live in NYC.
What an assenine bill. I didn't even know this thing existed...sneaky bastards..I wonder if this is a leftover from Spitzer's todo list.
Hell, if this passes I will just have to buy internet stuff from my NJ work location, have it shipped to my Brother-In-Law's house in Piscataway, NJ, and pick it up on my way home from work after it's delivered.
I know that most don't have this option, but it's a workaround I'd be able to live with, given that I'm in NJ 6 days each week....
I installed itunes/quicktime in a XP vmware image that I use especially for soft/crapware that I like to use but don't trust.
Problem solved.
>>I think the Gen Y or Millenials or whatever they're called has their priorities in order. Basing your life on your career and job is idiotic and I think that's where my generation is clueless
I don't disagree with what you're saying. But at the same time, you're wrong. Us gen x-ers are not clueless about this stuff, we went into our working lives expecting better than we ended up with.
In my view, we gen x-ers were raised in a different time, by parents who worked in an environment where you had a job for life. The value set of being loyal to a company is part of who we are..or were. We're adjusting slowly as things deteriorate..as we finally figure out that there is no such thing as a job for life anymore.
The gen y kids were raised to see the shit we have to deal with, and they've developed attitudes to compensate and protect themselves.
Yup. When you were young, I bet the grand prize on the gameshows was Fire. :)
Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip your barmaid.
Charlie Brown? http://msdn.microsoft.com/events/hero/images/episode1.jpg
Cartman? http://msdn.microsoft.com/events/hero/images/episode2.jpg
Wow. My knick-nack shelf just bluescreened.
The only thing left standing is my stuffed Tux.
Wouldn't it be cool if one could reset the device simply by flipping it over (hourglass style), rather than having to use some mechanism to reset the weight to the top of the device?
Just a thought.