Monday, 07 Apr 2014, By Elliot Jager Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/SciTech/IBM-mainframe-computer-anniversary/2014/04/07/id/563985#ixzz2yClySjqa The headline brought me up short. 50 years? It's been that long? And then I began to think about my first introduction to them. I was stationed at the Presidio of San Francisco. We would get massive computer printouts and, after reviewing them would make corrections in ink and then send them off somewhere to have the corrections inputted into they system - whatever that was. It often took far too long to get the new information according to my boss. He wanted it done faster. So, I made my way down to the lower levels of the base to an old WWII converted warehouse where the machine was located. A quick lesson on punch cards and how to type in the data to make them work and I found myself in front of one of these: So, as I sit here typing on my PC's keyboard, I shake my head and wonder who on earth calls them The good old days?
were heading back to the mainframe based computing methods, we just now call it 'the cloud' the NSA's wet dream is to have all our information stored in 'the cloud'... .
Neat old computer stuff! Okay it was a 32-bit system, But why after 50 years our PCs are currently stuck on 64-bit CPU architecture? I want my 300 digits of arbitrary precision Math! That's one benefit to programming: I can get it in Java but not from the hardware level.
