Viewing profile — kochbeck

I’m just going to leave this here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

It’s not that the mainframe is hard to learn. In fact, the environment is pretty easy to understand once you get past the archaic naming (but let’s not kid ourselves: on the POSIX …

I see a lot of “good” answers where good translates to reasonable business or social goals. But I can think of quite a few bad reasons. The top reason is, management wants workers …

The author could not be more wrong. Branches exist to handle and process A) cash demands, B) check and other non-specie instruments, and C) paper for commercial clients. If they’re…

Well… I read it. And I’ve gotta say, that sounds like a blatant violation of Regulation Y, the requirement that bank holding companies engage only in, “The business of banking.” Th…

Oh wow, that made me feel old. I actually read that article just before making the switch from the Radio Shack TRS-80 ecosystem to Commodore. See the Tussey ad for a 64C with an FS…

Goodness, Rexx. I’m pretty sure I got the job at IBM when I was a kid because I already knew Rexx on the 390, ARexx on the Amiga, and the OS/2 version. I also knew HLASM and ia32 a…

During US v Microsoft, I was in the middle of writing a brief to the court arguing that the solution to Microsoft’s monopoly was not to split the OS from the application groups, bu…

I still have a Model 100. It replaced the one I had in high school. It has, by far, the most comfortable keyboard I’ve ever used on a laptop. My typing speed on it approaches the s…

That depends. I give you the graphite grading scale: https://pencils.com/pages/hb-graphite-grading-scale Remember how standardized tests require you to use a “#2” pencil? That’s an…

I notice IBM was a major licensee. If you can figure out which product it was used in, the successor to that division (since I suspect it was something that’s now dead like PSP or …

If you want to stay in JS, check out Pocketsphinx ( http://syl22-00.github.io/pocketsphinx.js/ ). If you can get outside JS, look at Sphinx or Kaldi. As an alternative, if you're o…

Heh, yeah, as someone who still occasionally advocates for converting something back to batch, I know. Bear in mind, I'm typing this from an XOpen-certified UNIX machine, so obviou…

Meh, these guys got it blindingly wrong. But I suppose now that MIT TR picked it up, I have to write up a a response. Bother.

Umm... that was a pile of mediocre advice. They compared a bunch of plans to costs in San Francisco, but they overlooked the #1 most important thing: for persons with fairly low to…

I haven't delved deeply into the problem they're describing here, but it seems like I haven't really heard any very creative solutions to this. For instance, can you still create a…

\rant{I think it's funny that you say this, because I was just remarking to someone the other day that the primary way I've seen TeX and its little forest friends age is that it's …

There's actually a really good reason why this isn't coming anytime soon to the US: number portability is not entirely centralized, and the porting system is built to run in batch,…

5% is pretty much for contract rate offset. But $100/hr is not an unusually large hourly rate right now for finance. I'm curious what you want this person to do? If you're prepping…

What's particularly galling about this post (and the SOPA / PIPA / whatever people on the other side too), is that I haven't found anyone on either side of the argument who's stopp…

Meh, I left my post running tech there just before this story ran. One day I'll write what really happened. It's a lot more complex than people imagine.

Not sure how helpful this is, but I ran the development of Live Nation's site before the TM merger. The key systems you're probably looking for access to are TM Classic, TM Archtic…

Er, yes, but I'm not sure if this will be a satisfying answer: If you contact IBM Global Services, they have a group that can put together a hosted database proposal with very stri…

The usual benefit of porcelain is that it's on top of metal, and the metal takes a magnet. So if you're going to be putting something on the board that would benefit greatly from m…