What do you guys think of IBM?

[SignOfZeta]

I about shit my drawers when I read this:
http://www.vulture.com/2012/09/brad-pitt-to-produce-ibm-and-the-holocaust.html

Wow, I never thought that book would be made into a movie.

Well, it's not made yet, I guess. We'll see. With this and the upcoming movie about Turing, a lot more people are going to get some real computer knowledge dropped on them in a short span of time.

[Arkhan]

This is where all the appletards go

OMG
STEVE
JOBS
DIDN'T
INVENT
COMPUTERS?

[SignOfZeta]

I don't think there are many people like that. Once computer knowledge drops below a certain level they don't even know who Jobs was.

[thesteve]

as400 works well for forms/inventory tracking
windows can do it as well, but can be less reliable.
note that as400 talks to dumb terminals, and windows runs terminal emulators

[BigusSchmuck]

as400 works well for forms/inventory tracking
windows can do it as well, but can be less reliable.
note that as400 talks to dumb terminals, and windows runs terminal emulators

What crack are you smoking? The shit doesn't work very well at ALL. It bugs out and clears your system setup on the windows client, can't interface with anything worth a damn very well (cartrol, Epicore and a few others), have to get Lexmark printers for multiple tray function (already spent close to $5,000 on this), people get locked out on this DAILY, and to top things off this damn thing even with its Windows front end for the grain scale interface you can't even do a reprint of a scale ticket (kind of important for truck drivers). This thing is quite possibly the worst mistake this company has ever done and I just hope by the end of the year I'll still have a job considering there will probably be all sorts of layoffs if the grain department didn't at least make enough money to cover this mistake. And if the higher ups decide to push this thing on Agronomy and Payroll, there will be hell to pay for doing so. Knowing my luck, they'll start hiring a bunch of greying IBM guys to support this on site 24/7 because thats what I'm doing right now.

[thesteve]

I was speaking from experience at a former employer.
as to what it will and wont do, thats all in how its setup.

[SignOfZeta]

AS400 was perfectly fine for decades. It just isn't any f*cking good at all now because 1) unless you have a very specific application it's going to require all sorts of special hardware and software just to interface with all your modern stuff and 2) nobody knows how to use it except angry old dudes who got into the business when it actually paid something and will retire at any second.

I do still kind of wish they used it for ATMs though...

[BigusSchmuck]

AS400 was perfectly fine for decades. It just isn't any f*cking good at all now because 1) unless you have a very specific application it's going to require all sorts of special hardware and software just to interface with all your modern stuff and 2) nobody knows how to use it except angry old dudes who got into the business when it actually paid something and will retire at any second.

I do still kind of wish they used it for ATMs though...

They use it for gas systems, thats enough. Although the interface with gas boy sucks mad balls...

[majors]

They use it for gas systems, thats enough. Although the interface with gas boy sucks mad balls...

GVR in the house? I had a contract at Gilbarco for a year and some. On the deploment team for pre-production(read: beta) Passport software. All running shitty Windows boxes with modems for RDC (I had forgotten 56k speed!). AS/400 versus XP?...6 of 1, half dozen of another...

[BigusSchmuck]

They use it for gas systems, thats enough. Although the interface with gas boy sucks mad balls...

GVR in the house? I had a contract at Gilbarco for a year and some. On the deploment team for pre-production(read: beta) Passport software. All running shitty Windows boxes with modems for RDC (I had forgotten 56k speed!). AS/400 versus XP?...6 of 1, half dozen of another...

Yeah we still have a few modems in the IT room. Its been my mission these past 2 years to finally retire them just for the simple reason they are noisy and sooooooo out of date (56k would be a luxury with these things). I will say that we finally did get rid of the old dot matrix continuous feed printer, gawd that thing was noisy. Anywho, the AS400 drama continues as people now realize they have to manually clear out their printer ques. Oh joy...

[roflmao]

AS400 was perfectly fine for decades. It just isn't any f*cking good at all now because 1) unless you have a very specific application it's going to require all sorts of special hardware and software just to interface with all your modern stuff and 2) nobody knows how to use it except angry old dudes who got into the business when it actually paid something and will retire at any second.

I do still kind of wish they used it for ATMs though...

A couple of years ago I developed a website that interfaced with a database on an AS400.  That was fun.  Almost.