Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2010/08/western-civilization-runs-on-mainframe.html

  I think the article makes it a bit unclear what "mainframe" means.

  A cursory examination of wikipedia makes me think that mainframes are:

- mainly (if not even exclusively) used as servers or, in some cases, as
  supercomputers,

- designed to be very scalable and be able to handle significant amounts
  of users and/or traffic (or in the case of supercomputers, heavy-duty
  processes), and

- designed on the hardware side to run uninterrupted even in the case of
  partial hardware failure (meaning that most components are hot-swappable
  and have redundancy).

  In other words, they are very reliable big-ass servers aimed at having
zero downtime. Which sounds like a really important feature of big servers.

  The article seems to talk like all mainframes dying has been something
expected for a long time, and that it's a big surprise that they are quite
alive and well, even today. This is probably a common sentiment (not just
exclusive to the author of this article, that is).

  I don't really get it. Why are people expecting (if not even hoping)
for mainframes to quietly die? What would they be replaced with? If
mainframes are extremely *reliable* servers with zero downtime, wouldn't
it be in the interest of everybody that they *don't* die, and instead
their technology developed even further? What are you going to replace
them with? A PC (which would go down immediately when its PSU dies or its
HD gets a bad sector)? Why would that be a good thing?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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