skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
They're powerful, reliable, and compared to writing software for an equally-sized cluster or distributed system, (once you're in the right mindset) easy to write for. Or alternately, not to write for -- you can just keep migrating the same ancient COBOL up to newer systems, without ever changing it, and the stuff just keeps ticking.

The business case is that they work, and have a great track record.

Overall the biggest selling point that I've seen is probably reliability. There's a perception that mainframes are more reliable than commodity-parts systems. In truth I think this is confirmation and sample bias; if you run a business that has a mainframe (very expensive, built for reliability, software has had 20+ years of debugging) and a bunch of servers (inexpensive, cost-optimized, software is constant work-in-progress), it's always going to seem as though the mainframe is unbreakable and everything else is dangerously unreliable. It's as much a mindset issue as an architectural one.

So many businesses will pay the premium for mainframes as their "core" systems, and then hang a lot of commodity systems off of it to provide access or interaction with the mainframe data.
No. You can't replace a mainframe with a rack of x86 boxes. In mission critical applications where reliability (effectively 100%; five nines just isn't good enough) and I/O throughput are of paramount importance, System z is your only choice. These applications underpin our entire monetary system, among other things.
The "hard to read part" is not very honest. You can so similar slides for a awful lot of languages, I'm not sure I see the point. C macros, for one, introduce similar issues.

The "C++ makes auditing painful" is just flat out wrong. Any decent IDE alleviates the trivial ambiguities given as an example (references...). Auditing isn't done in just reading the code when reaching a certain size, anyway, so I'm not sure where the author wants to go.

Additionally, a properly written program is consistent, and that's true for any language. If the program you audit is inconsistent, I can feel your pain, but don't blame C++ for it.

I also don't understand what "too powerful" means. Power is relative, that C++ is too powerful for many tasks is an obvious statement but saying that it's just "too powerful full stop" is a bit silly, isn't it?
Running 2.6.32... I've noticed occasional (maybe every few weeks?) stalls where things become largely unresponsive for a few seconds with a btrfs thread at 100% CPU. Not sure if this is related to my SSD or not; I thought I got one without the stalls (Indilinx Barefoot controller), but it's still a fairly early one so maybe it has some issues that confuse btrfs into busy-waiting or something...
It's a compiler problem and clang is an attempt at solving it.
Ask HN: move from Maths to Programming
I am a mathematician considering to change from academics to programming. What skills should I learn for making this change as efficiently as possible? Any other recommendations?
Thanks for the tips; OpenSUSE 11.3 runs on 2.6.34, which as far as I can tell has the snapshot deletion built in, but I'd better test it before I rely on it.

Re booting: I've already got a boot partition as my root is a logical volume on top of a RAID5 array anyway (thinking about changing this though - probably better to buy 2 new much bigger HDDs and RAID1 them instead).
As I replied to the other, the site is taking a hit right now. We are looking at ways to speed things up beyond the load balancing that we already doing. Thanks.

Thanks also for your feedback. We will definitely be getting a site redesign.

As for testing for free, do you mean a perpetually free account or a discount for 30 days or something like that?

Thanks immensely for your encouragement, too.
Find person(s) who need help w/ distributed systems. Figure out the problems they need to solve. Discover what interests you. Work towards learning how to solve those intersting problems. Stay in touch with the people you meet and get known as the guy who they need.
Against Intellectual Monopoly
Not exactly, what is being proposed is more along the lines of making your own dough, sauce and then a pizza versus ordering a pizza or cooking a frozen one. Your home made pizza might taste a bit better, but why are you spending your time making pizza's when all you want to do is eat them?
These won't necessarily teach you how to do it, but reading them definitely helped motivate me when things got slow. Hearing the experiences and successes of other startups/founders always gets me excited to get to work.

Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good - Sarah Lacy

Founders at Work - Jessica Livingston

The Facebook Effect - David Kirkpatrick
While hosting anything that's too serious in your garage probably isn't a great idea- I've hosted stuff at non-traditional places before and been just fine. Nothing of ours is mission critical that I'm doing this with.

We've got a rack at a local university that's in a large (8x10) closet with its own power, HVAC and fire suppression. The facility is fairly secure and you'd have to know two layers of door codes to get in there.

Yet we've got 6 servers in a rack. The servers in total cost us around $3000 (could have done it for less, but one of them we bought new and went overkill on), and we pay nothing for monthly hosting.

If you sniff around local universities, you can likely find someone that is cool with you throwing something in their rack for free or cheap. I know many of the dorms at MIT have several 42U racks on each floor and people throw stuff in those all the time. I know of others that have cheap hosting for affiliated members.

Time to call your alma mater?
Maybe one day, say the year 3000 cars will be driving under cars, under cars, under cars. We can only go up to the skies.
As a 25-year professional z/os programmer working primarily in COBOL and CICS, I think the dearth of new COBOL programmers is not the big problem it is made out to be. Having learned C, Java, SQL, Common Lisp, and Scheme on my own, I have no doubt that programmers will jump to COBOL when the marketplace starts offering rewards (higher salaries) for doing so. The outsourcing trend is holding this back as companies continue to pursue the holy grail of cheap programmers, but all such efforts eventually run afoul of the need for local talent with a deep understanding of the application. A good programmer can get up to speed on COBOL very quickly. Getting up to speed on a large application? That'll take a few years.

The problem with legacy apps on any platform is not the language (unless you're talking about some very obscure unsupported language). The problem in my experience is the tangled mess of new code piled on top of poorly designed old code. In such systems, a small change can have unintended side effects. The solution is exhaustive testing (expensive and time-consuming) or a Hail Mary installation (leading to "testing" in production and yet another reactive fix). COBOL didn't create this problem and changing to another language won't fix it. In my shop, we practice test-driven development and deliver high quality releases. Success on the receiving end of these releases varies along with the established coding/testing/integration practices at each customer site.
That's a great idea. I'd really like to see a "raw" format option on the server that would give the code and metadata in a structured format.

With that one could write a tool that suggests improvements to code as it tests it using this as a sort of crowd-sourced benchmark suite. It may not be 100% accurate, but at least it would give verified data instead of the educated-guess strategy most of us employ now.
Bubbles are not visible when you are in them. So I guess it is a good bet that when many are saying something is bubbling, it probably isn't.
For you vim-lovers out there, DrawIt accomplishes most of the same things: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=40
People probably like table better when writing HTML by hand since table gives a rough mapping between the source and the rendered result, whereas with floating div you really have to imagine what it looks like. With WYSIWYG tools, it's not so much a problem using floating div.
the author of this paper looks like this: http://htlr.org/lad35fh (yes, it's him)
> 1. The price of college is continuing to rise faster than the rate of inflation.

Then maybe inflation isn't taking everything into account? My health insurance cost is rising faster than inflation too. So is health care cost and nearly every service that requires labor and cannot be imported/outsourced. Doesn't that tell you that the true rate of inflation could be much higher than the publicized rate? Rate of inflation includes lots of goods that can be cheaply imported. But you cannot import enough cheap labor with PhD degrees. And these are not included in calculating the rate of inflation.
Firebug (Firefox debugger extension)
Actually, I think the key is what you just mentioned...

backup.
Hi, yes, I made it non-conmutative to make it a little bit more difficult, I think you don't get to see a non conmutative algebra in high school, it was a way to take her out of her comfort area.

However you made a sligth mistake with the shifting part:

"The set part of the new object will be the union of the two sets with all the letters shifted as many places as specified by the integer part of the second TIAM object."

I think you are shifting a little bit too much.
http://gettingreal.37signals.com/
The simple answer is that you have to have a consistent view of the world. Let's say that 100 Linux boxes in a cluster == 1 mainframe. Let's also say you're a bank. Someone connects to node 1 and makes a withdrawal from a joint account, and someone simultaneously makes a withdrawal from the same account on node 100. How do you check they haven't gone over their overdraft unless you can serialize those transactions? And if you can, and make it scale, congratulations: you're now where IBM was in the 70s'.

It's pointless to invoke the almighty Google; they simply don't deal with problems in this class.
There is actually mainframe emulation, it can certainly be done. However, IBM is doing everything to keep that unattractive and with a bad image.
You're exactly right.

I worked on a mainframe for a major Bay Area school district during and shortly after high school, as a computer operator and COBOL programmer.

I was there for a couple of years; rebooting the mainframe was unheard-of. It never seemed to develop memory leaks, it didn't get more quirky after it had been running for a long time. Since it wasn't accessible to the internet (or even most of the network), it didn't need to have any time spent on it trying to secure it against the latest Windows bug. It never required software updates, other than the ones that we coded ourselves and deployed without having to reboot anything. The database didn't fall over when we ran a payroll job or report cards.

But, best of all -- and I love telling this story, because I think it really illustrates something that the techs using all the modern stuff just don't "get" -- it had the best recovery systems I have ever seen, hands down.

So, one day there was a power outage. We had backup power systems, but like a lot of data processing departments we were just a couple of overworked people and they hadn't been checked in a while. They didn't last as long as we were expecting and the mainframe kicks off. Around that time, I'd been playing around with Linux and such, and I had some idea of just how ugly things got when a complex operating system powered off in the middle of doing things.

I was a little bit stressed out. The other guy, a clean-shaven greybeard, wasn't.

When the power came back on, the mainframe booted up -- quickly -- and resumed its operations from pretty much the exact point at which the power had gone out. It didn't miss a beat, none of the data it produced was erroneous.

That was in '98 or thereabouts.

To say that mainframes are more reliable than the popular alternatives is an understatement. :-)
Not sure about running on Linux, but there are COBOL and CICS systems that run on small servers. In fact there are a whole range of mainframe-like machines (e.g. AS/400) from IBM, to support different size businesses. The amount of data in some applications IS immense. If you are managing a multi-million-account credit card portfolio on a single mainframe, which nicely supports all your realtime apps (including a 100-request per second authorizations system) and your 6-hour batch cycle, there is no reason at all to port that to smaller machines. The mainframe is marvelously stable and nowadays the whole machine rarely gets hung up (I haven't seen or heard of this happening to my company or its customers since the early 90's).

Sure, you could move those apps to a bunch of smaller boxes. Then you open yourself up to server failure, admin costs of maintaining multiple boxes, etc.

Mainframes wrote the book on SaaS long before 'net cloud computing came along. IBM and others have operated computing as a utility for years and years. What manager who gets his IT done on rented computer time is going to suggest taking the apps in-house on a bunch of servers? None that I know of.
"encouraged coding styles of modern and real OOP C++"

Where do I go to learn those given that I work in an all C shop? One of the problems of learning C++ is the sheer profusion of material that's available, much of it written when the technology looked a lot shinier than it does now. Would you care to recommend some books or articles on C++ style that have stood the test of more than one fashion-epoch?

I'm especially worried about the [to my eyes] rather large number of keywords in C++ and the many exciting ways in which they can interact. I think this is where advice about useful patterns [sorry] might be most useful.

thanks

c
The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank - about finding product / market fit, customer development, how to manage the process. Peppered with interesting and entertaining anecdotes.
True, except that a lot of programmers want to follow the "sexy" technology, and COBOL just ain't that.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VArK7Jz...
Slightly off topic: I've recently gotten to the point where I feel comfortable and productive in Vim. I know emacs is worth the effort to learn if you're replacing most editors out there. But does anyone have any opinions on whether it's worth the effort if the editor you'd be replacing is Vim?
dont use WYSWIG tools, use firebug.
Are those really buss[^H]es or are they trains?

You can cross the bus with the tram:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Trolleybus

...with the articulated bus:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Articulated_b...
Or an apostrophe after "Facebook," I think.
I actually think Smart Bear is a pretty good brand. Think about it for a second, how does your mind respond to the name?

Smart Bear Software implies a lot of things, almost all good. Perhaps a product that is intelligently designed, with a new or alternative approach to problems? Maybe it means you bring thought leadership from an unlikely source? Maybe a wise old bear lumbering down from his cave to solve your problems? Exactly what you do right?

The fact of the matter is that a lot of old guard companies have horrendous brands. SAS or HP mean nothing (by themselves) to the buyer.
Better returns might come from ensuring that everyone gets a good kindergarten education.
This concept was brought up in one of the Patlabor anime movies, except instead of buses, it was police/fire/ambulance/emergency vehicles that could move over congested traffic to get to an accident scene more quickly.

Kudos to the Chinese for being willing to try it out, but the concept existed at least in 2001(if it was Patlabor 3) or 1993(Patlabor 2)
Getting a work pass is bureaucratic but not difficult. Working in the tech industry plus degree is a shoo in for a work pass. If you can fill out a straightforward form and photocopy a certificate...
And besides, who cares if someone else is using tables? You're not the one that has to maintain them.
Information theory is a tricky beast. Pi contains no more information than it takes to express it, so in information theory terms it doesn't contain much information at all since it can be expressed very concisely.

It so happens that pi + enough information to use pi as raw material to produce the desired information can output anything you like, which some people find amazing. But really, "anything + enough information to use 'anything' as raw material to produce the desired output" works equally well, too; pi isn't actually that special either. Also, the information needed to produce your desired output from pi is on average larger than the information in the desired output in the first place, which is why the "compress your things by referencing a digit number in pi" doesn't actually work.

So, pi contains all the information in the world as long as you use more information to extract it from pi, in which case all you are really doing is expressing the original information in a particularly unpleasant encoding.

But it sounds cool to say pi has all this information... "how can anything with an infinite number of normalized digits consist of only a handful of bits?" asks our feeble, mathematics-impaired human minds.

(By the way, this is extended agreement with the post I'm replying to, not any implicit disagreement.)
As an Emacs user, my answer is no. Choose your path and become proficient in it. Unless you have ample time, you may run the risk of becoming a Jack of All Trades, Master of None.
Vanilla windows install, same problem here. C-h m will show the documentation for the minor mode, there should be keyboard commands for everything, I'll need to spend some time on this, it looks great...
Downtime doesn't sound so bad when your site is relatively unknown... What happens when your fortunate enough to get your first piece of good press that directs a flood of traffic to your site? Seems to me that's when downtime is most likely to happen, and when you'd have preferred to pay professionals to prepare you for it.
I know that Google Checkout isn't a "real" financial institution but surely, I'd think those problems were of the same class - perhaps it's just that they don't have to worry about legacy problems (yet).
Up the Organization - http://www.amazon.com/Up-Organization-Corporation-Stifling-S...

And outstanding book about running a business.
Digital Fast Food Menus Drive Data Center Growth
Using “and” and “or” in Ruby
They are, almost by definition, invisible to the participants. But you can call a bubble during the bubble, as many people did during the tech bubble or the real estate bubble. It stays a bubble as long as they (or at least their financial bets) are in the minority.
Well, in many ways the "rate my startup" posts are a smaller, more down-to-earth version of TechCrunch that actually allows you to interact with the founders of the startup and really get to know the product and the person(s) behind it. You also often get access to betas just by being part of HN.
The takeaway for me (since I use Emacs in a console and not in GUI mode) is `C-x n n` and `C-x n w`. Looks like it could be pretty useful for `M-x replace-regexp` (if I don't want to use query-replace-regexp, and I've got a lot of searching and replacing to do in a particular region.
Im confused. I figured the new best way, with the insanely cheap prices was the cloud. It saves you redeploying in the cloud later. Need more CPU, RAM, etc, click a button, clone a server.

Looking into Amazon even, their prices are fractions of a penny on bandwidth. And I see reddit dump all their servers, drop employee load, and it seems the home garage is rad for testing, but maybe not that great, as one day, if it all works out, you have to retool for the cloud anyway.

P.S. I am doing hosting of non critical stuff myself on a Comcast 50/10 line which is really 60/15, on a few mac mini's, which use near no power, and seem to stay up pretty well. I am just toting around with my personally ideas mostly. I like the fast local lan access, and I jump to a VPN so I can feel it like the rest of the world would. But it is only temp, until the idea proves viable, and then off to the cloud I go.
Education is one component of inflation. Different components are rising faster or slower than the general rate of inflation. For example, housing used to inflate faster--not so much, lately. And medical care is still growing fast.

But food, clothes, and especially electronics are getting cheaper.
Android Sales Overtake iPhone in the U.S.
A backup won't do you any good if you don't have something to restore it to, so that is why I said infrastructure is the key.
It's interesting to see Wisty's post and the replies immediately prove his point. BTW I like Haskell.
"Four steps to the epiphany." (its about customer development). Many angel investors wont even invest in someone who hasn't read it - which is how I learned about it.

I went to business school and that book taught me more than 4 years of wasted time.
I feel a mild uneasiness in the force, as if millions of people discovered blogging via a great new interface, then gradually got bored with or forgot about it just as they did the first time they tried it 8 years ago.
The regulatory framework and special interest groups are probably causing a negative feedback loop.

That, and the AMA don't like to add more doctors.

Also, if we could get rid of the general education requirement, and focus on what Doctors actually need, as opposed to the idea of a liberal education, we could lower the cost of eduction by 2 years equivalence?

This would also lower the cost for other majors too.
These corporations may not see it, because they do not understand it, but having such legacy systems a risk to their operations. The longer they wait to migrate, the more expensive it will be, and the harder it will be to attract talent to the project. There may come a point where they can no longer find anyone to support their hardware or software, and it'll force them to stagnate against their competition who may be able to provide better or different offerings because they are not tied to a system they can't modify.

My understanding of business is that you should never stagnate, and always keep advancing.

People that I've talked to who have worked with such systems indicated that they built giant shims around the systems in other languages to allow them to be adaptable. In theory this gives them a clear interface definition (it may be huge, thousands of method signatures, and possible direct schema access, but it can still be a clear interface) to boot strap a core system replacement in another language and hardware system.
The rules of the free market game says someone using cutting edge technology will come up and sweep all. Which doesn't seem to happen. So maybe, as long as it works, it doesn't matter if it's Cobol and the expensive Cobol programmer is being paid peanuts when compared to the money being made.
i would argue that if you are only spending $500 on hardware (I'm assuming 8GiB ram there?) you are right on the borderline of co-lo vs vps.

you can get reasonable co-lo for a hundred bucks a month, and ridiculous amounts of bandwidth for two hundred bucks.

also, total up your power costs for the server. the thing is California charges you more the more you use; your top marginal KwH can be pretty expensive, especially if you live with other people.