Re: [gentoo-user] What magic does portage use?

[Dale]

Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Wednesday 16 December 2009 01:34:33 Dale wrote:
>
>>> A real world scenario would be a bank server doing transactions. Those
>>> big irons do never ever get shut down.
>>> (But they also don't ever get really updated ;)
>>>
>>> Did you know, that they still use cobol-code from decades ago. The code
>>> has to interact with newer systems, but the existing code is not allowed
>>> to be altered, they just run it inside hugh java application servers on
>>> their main frames :D
>>>
>>> Bye,
>>> Daniel
>>>
>>>
>> Well, I wish someone would tell my bank that.  They are down pretty
>> regular "upgrading" something.  I use the term upgrading lightly here.
>> It usually makes things worse but anyway.  They run windoze on their rig
>> so they most likely can't help that.  ;-)
>>
>
> They upgrade the *front*ends*, not the real stuff at the back.
>
> Switching a mainframe off is not a supported activity :-)
>
> Along those lines I could tell you some funny stories about monumental cockups
> banks do to their front ends (my S.O. does banking data warehousing), but I'm
> not actually supposed to know some of that stuff so I won't :-)
>
>

I'm not sure about back end or front end but they sure make a mess of it 
at times.

>> Hearing they use old code is not to surprising actually.  Look at air
>> traffic control.  Every time they try to upgrade, it crashes.  I guess
>> the cheapest bidder is not always the best.  o_O
>>
>
> Every such crash after an upgrade I know of is trying to run the thing on
> Windows...
>
>

Yep, I read the same thing.  Why not use a real OS?  I'm thinking BSD or 
something.  Linux would be good but I think BSD is even better suited 
for basically 100% uptime.

Dale

:-)  :-)