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A comment on Western civilization runs on the mainframe. Parent comment

Re:Western civilization runs on the mainframe by sophacles on Monday August 02, 2010 @01:28PM (#1568280)
Why do you keep comparing old mainframes to current tech? Why not compare current mainframes to current tech -- its like those people who try and compare the java of 1998 with the C of today (you know "jvm takes minutes to start, and has x, y and z gc issues...").

Mainframes from IBM are under constant revision and update, just like server tech.

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Re:Western civilization runs on the mainframe by Retric on Monday August 02, 2010 @01:32PM (#1568305)
Because they are still being used. People think they need to replace an old mainframe with a cluster but that's just not true. Also, large modern day mainframes have become distributed systems so while you may still need a cluster you are already using one.

PS: We live in an age of horrable custom software, sitting on a monstrous stack of terrible commodity software. If you spend a noticeable amount of time waiting on a modern computer system it's really just a software problem. (Wait you actually want to use XML?) But, often upgrading the hardware is really the best option.

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