Gentleman,
I must say I basically agree with C.Mills 's approaches .
I would also like to add some aspects:
a) Once wintel/linux (and even unix/risc) are plataforms aimed by
crackers/intruders, its security adds extra costs (hw, sw & HR) and
disasters/incidents to manage.
b) A computer-grid seems to me a little bit (not so little) far
complex to manage and extract real profit ( on response time x costs).
It's complicated to adjust, to fine-tune, and I bet it will not be
so easy to re-arrange DB's or to increase the grid without doing it.
Mainly if you are using no-charge SW. I can't believe good tools
would be available this way.
At last, I can say (after my 50's, more than 30 on the MF road)
corporations are living beeings, they have memories, habits, colors,
they have birthdays/parties, and so .... their systems/applications
..... some have bad habits ... they keep them (perhaps because their
users and/or their analysts/IT developers). Sometimes, it is necessary
a revolution, like that we are focusing , so that new blood come in
and brake corporation's paradigms ...... resulting in a really
new system/application.
My point have already been stated earlier in this list by someone:
Couldn't the solution, the new application, be developed in MF with
new technics/tools/facilities with some new blood ? Was the grid
solution more a strategic solution to solve internal problems ?
I bet it so.
In their future will araise new problems, without answers, without tips,
without ROT's, without any white-head pro to talk to.
Well, in case of virus, they always can boot in safe mode and run NAV
or AVG or SCAN/CLEAN on each of their 1/n host/server component (they
will certainly have a script to ease operators life).
Sorry for joking, I couldn't resist.
PS: When my car air-cond fails, I stop the car, turn engine off,
turn it back on, and so the air-cond is back online.
If my car electronics were MF , the error would not occur twice
( I would have apllied a PTF ).
Wish you all a nice weekend,
for I am on vacations, leaving to a distant nice beach,
with my wife and no kids (and no PC and no MF).
Hasta a la vista.
João Carlos R. Baptista
Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
Charles Mills escreveu:
Without knowing what your day-to-day role is, it's hard to say.
First, simply by not being in denial. Mainframes are not better because the
people who use them are older, the boxes are bigger, they were around in
1979, and all of your professional peers work on them. Mainframes are not
better because we all know they're better, and that's that, and anyone who
disagrees with me is obviously one of "them."
Second, many of the participants on this list, myself included, work for
(directly or indirectly) IBM or a software vendor. We have a direct or
potential influence on speed, cost, ease-of-use, reliability, and security.
If you work for an end-user company, then you have some influence on, for
example, the ease-of-use of your systems. I often hear on this list a
defense of obscurity: "why would you want to change how JCL works -- it was
good enough in 1968, it's good enough now." That is not a productive
attitude. Face it, the mainframe is in many ways user-hostile. We are the
people who invented the cult of the unapproachable IT guru: "authorized
personnel only." Changing those attitudes would be a good step.
And some things cannot be changed. Better to work to advocate intelligently
for the use of mainframes for the tasks they are good at, than to operate in
denial of the fact that it's not the best choice for every computing task,
or every company.
Charles
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